Asking For Trouble
by vifetoile89
Summary: First, how Percy met Audrey - a Muggle chick who seems his opposite in every way, and who insists on asking him out for tea every chance she gets. Now, how Audrey found Percy - a wizard on the wrong side of the war, as she tries to pick her own way in the crossfire. Now featuring Chapter Titles! Deluxe!
1. First Impressions

Asking For Trouble

By Vifetoile

Disclaimer: I own nothing of any of these characters. And I don't even know where the idea of Audrey as a Muggle came from, except that it makes some sense. I'm only playing in Rowling's universe for fun and storytelling practice. Enjoy!

Percy looked at the address in his hand, frowning. This road was near Diagon Alley, and by all sources was where his brothers lived, but none of the buildings looked magical at all. It was nothing but Muggle flats in great blocks all up and down… most depressing.

This was a mistake anyway. He was asking for trouble just by being here…

A door opened, and he jumped. A Muggle walked out, a very thin woman about his own age, wearing a baggy jacket and a short skirt. She hummed, looking down at her feet, and glanced up by chance. "Oh!" she gasped.

Percy stiffened at once, indignant. He was wearing his best Muggle clothes, but was he giving himself away _that_ much?

"Are you related to Fred and George?" the girl asked in a loud, nasally voice.

Percy stumbled for a moment on how to respond. She filled in for him, "You must be, with that hair, and look… freckles…" she covered her mouth with a hand. "Oh, sorry, lookit me, there must be a dozen redheads in this part of town, sorry, sir."

"No, I –" he let out a tight sigh, he was running behind schedule, he had to have _some_ knowledge… "As it happens I _am_ looking for Fred and George. Weasley. The Weasley brothers."

"That's them, yeah!"

"You _know_ them?" He took a closer look at the girl. She seemed so _Muggle_ – Muggle in the sense of 'shabby, tacky, or tawdry'– from her frizzled hair (which he strongly suspected was only dyed) to her half-tied shoelaces.

"Oh, sure. Was trying to drop in just now, but they're out. Usually home by this time." She finished walking down the steps. "You must be one of their brothers."

"I'm looking for George."

"Well, he's not here." She shrugged. "I'm Audrey, by the way."

He only nodded. She didn't go away. He asked, to cut the awkwardness, "They live in this building, then? Are you sure?"

"Yeah! Got a nice roomy flat. They cook divinely, too…" she got a dreamy look in her eyes, and Percy inwardly reflected that she looked like the type who could use a few square meals on a regular basis – then he quashed that voice. He was starting to sound like his mother. Besides, Muggle girls were always trying to starve themselves – Penelope used to complain about it all the time. '_Don't think about Penelope_.'

The girl interrupted his thoughts. "Well, I think I'll get a cup of tea round the corner. Want to come with?"

"Just tell me – are they all right? Any trouble or – or – I don't know…"

Audrey, who'd been fiddling with her fingernails, looked up. "Fred and George are two very well-adjusted young men. And they en't just faking it, either. I'd be able to tell. They make me feel like part 'a the family." She smiled very slowly.

'_Her? Family_?' Then he looked at Audrey. She reminded him a bit of Ginny, in the summer after her first year, when she'd had nightmares and ate little and took long walks alone. _Damaged_ was the word he wanted.

For an instant he was secure in feeling superior over a manic little Muggle chick – then she said, "You know, if you stick around I'm sure they'd love to see you."

"No, they wouldn't." Superiority gave way to anger. How dare she? How dare she be so secure in their warmth and welcome? The nerve!

"Are you Percy? They mentioned you, once."

Percy felt his ears growing red. He gripped his arms behind his back. "Oh, did they?"

"Said you'd had a falling out with the family."

"I'd thank you not to talk about things you don't understand."

"Hey, calm down, sir. I've had a falling-out with my family, too."

"I'm sure you have," he snapped.

"Hey! What does _that_ mean?"

Percy turned on his heel and walked away. She wasn't worth a Memory Charm.

ooo

The next week he'd steeled his resolve once more and returned to the dingy Muggle street. The twins, together, could hardly be reasoned with, but if they perhaps didn't return home at the same time, he had a chance. He would talk to George, alone. George would see reason. George was close to Charlie and Charlie was the only one who could have really sympathized, so maybe some of Charlie's rationality would have rubbed off on…

It was a long shot. But, by Merlin, Percy needed _something_, somewhere to start. It wasn't right to let his family be led –

Dammit. That girl was there again! She was dressed a bit warmer this time, time. She was so – what was the word? Tawdry.

He planned to turn aside, but she'd spotted him. "Hello, Prodigal Son!"

He folded his arms. "I am," he said, "Hardly prodigal. I'll have you know I have been commended for my prudence in money matters."

"Oh, come off it. Its only a nickname." She appeared to have either forgiven or forgotten his fit of temper when last they met. "So, no sign of the twins."

Percy shrugged, trying to look as though this news was meaningless. "Well. You said last week they were usually here by now."

"Well, that was last week. Fred said something about a lawyer meeting—" she flitted her hand in a dismissive gesture, "—and George is probably out with Angelina."

He blinked. "Wait, George?"

"Yeah."

"With Angelina _Johnson_?"

"Yeah! You know her?"

"At school – I though she was dating Fred?"

"Yeah, they mentioned it, apparently it didn't work out."

"I just – I didn't expect that…"

"Wel, that's school, eh? People change."

"I _know_ people change! Why would Angelina just go from one to the other? Are they just the same to her?"

"Hey, Prodigal Son, calm down."

"I'm perfectly calm!"

"Yeah, and I'm Queen Bess. Take a stress pill, why don't you?"

"Of all the impertinent –"

"No need to go using language like that."

He was about to correct her for thinking 'impertinent' was bad language, but he saw that she was grinning. She was amused? How could she be?

"So, do you want me taking a message?"

"No, don't give them a message."

"Not even that you showed up?"

"No!"

He didn't quite trust her. As a Ministry employee Percy believed that Memory Charms were an essential and fundamental part of a happy Muggle populace, but sadly he was not yet good enough to risk performing one now.

He started to walk away, but she called out, "Hey, now don't leave in a bad mood. Fancy a cup of tea?"

He stopped and turned to look at her. What on _earth_ did she care whether he left in a bad mood or not?

"I said, fancy a spot of tea?"

"No, thank you."

He left. And for an entire week afterwards, he found himself haunted by the strangest, strangest regret.

ooo

So that was why, three days later, when he'd met her at that same flat, he'd accepted her bizarre offer of a cup of tea.

ooooo

A/N: I feel like there might be more to this story, but I haven't quite gotten the right sense of their conversation yet. If I get enough interest, I may add a follow-up. For the moment, though, this piece is begging to be published. Feel free to leave a review!


	2. Cup of Tea

He told himself at least twenty times, _This is a mistake. This is a mistake_. He regarded the list of available teas with dismay. What kind of a teahouse didn't have Moonthistle tea? That was his favorite…

Wait. A _Muggle_ teahouse. That was the sort.

The teahouse, like Audrey, was cluttered and not very well organized. The waiters called hellos to her and she waved cheerily back. She ordered her tea quickly and then picked a table. Percy agonized over his choice, then went with English Breakfast. Even Muggles couldn't mess that up too badly, could they?

As he tried to curl his long legs under the table, Percy shuddered to think of what office gossip would be if he was seen here, in company with a Muggle. His knees collided with Audrey's.

"So…" She said, drawing the syllable out like a ball of yarn.

"So."

"You like English breakfast?"

"It wakes me up."

"You like the caffeine, hm?"

"The what?"

"Caffeine. The wake-up stuff in English breakfast, Irish breakfast, Scottish breakfast… is there a Welsh breakfast tea? Coffee, chocolate, soda… So what do you do for a living?"

"I'm… I'm a secretary," he said, biting his tongue to keep the extra embellishments out.

She gave a little laugh. "Secretary? Really? You don't look like secretary material."

He scowled. "What do _you_ think is secretary material?"

"Oh, a chick, for one thing. Hair pulled back in a bun, y'know, pantyhose, cat-eye glasses… you've got _those_ down, I'll give you that."

"I just have bad vision," he mumbled. "Got it from my father." He hated his horn-rimmed glasses: so often he'd wished he could have at least gotten less ostentatious frames.

"I like the glasses, though." Audrey looked again at the menu. "I've got the same – rheumatism in me legs and I'm not even thirty. Sad, isn't it? From my dad, too."

"Are you an only child?"

"Depends on how you count it." She tugged at a lock of hair. "I'm the only daughter of my mum and dad, but I've got two older sisters courtesy of my dad and his first wife. I work in an office myself, by the way," she added with no transition. "I'm an information specialist… work with computers, mostly. I'm getting to know them very well. If you ever have a computer problem, I'm your gel."

"I'll remember…" '_Don't think about Dad_.'

"Ugh, you wouldn't believe what this bloke down in Marketing said to me today… Mind if I tell you?"

Percy shrugged. "Why not?"

And he listened to her. And he didn't stop listening for about three whole months, consistently astounded at himself at how he kept accepting her invitations to tea, against his own better judgment. After three months, Percy knew the names of all the waiters and waitresses who were Audrey's friends, her favorite tea (Silver Needle), how she took it (black), and her five favorite kinds of pastries. He knew the entire history of her career at secondary school, and something of her family history. She knew far less about him.

Percy was less talkative, but not because he disliked Audrey. At his job, he spent himself in talking – asking questions, paying compliments, giving orders, acquiescing to superiors – not to mention the waves and waves of small talk. He exhausted himself in useless talk. It was nice to just listen for a change, without trying to find out how he could benefit from the information he was gathering.

Audrey loved personal anecdotes, and tangents, and rants (usually against "The Establishment," and where such rants typically made his skin crawl, he consoled himself with the fact that this was the _Muggle_ establishment, completely different, and it was all right). She also had a fondness for parenthetical asides.

She was in the middle of a rant against the depiction of women and girls in television and movies – complete fog to Percy – when she suddenly switched gears.

"But wait a minute. Percy. I've been doing all the talking."

"What? I don't mind."

"I know you don't." And she smiled at him, a rare, vulnerable smile that suggested to him at once that she knew many, many people who _did_ mind. "But for three months, I've been doing almost all of the talking. Why don't you tell me about yourself?"

"What?"

"Where did you go to school? Who are your friends? What are your hobbies?"

"I – ah – er –" Red lights were flashing. Percy was suppressing panic; this was an invasion of privacy – he looked around, his eyes alighted on the cash register and the tiny monitor, glowing ominously. "Computers!"

"What?" Audrey asked.

"You work with computers, right?"

"Yes…"

"I'd like to see a computer of yours. I know hardly anything about them."

"You want to visit my flat?" Her face brightened up, which gave Percy enough time to think this was a bad idea. "But sure!"

This was a mistake. Again. Oh, he was just asking for it. Why did he get so many bad ideas with Audrey? A Muggle's apartment building, he may as well be posting up flyers with a picture of "Trouble" and adding "REWARD" at the bottom.

But then again, he admitted, he _was_ curious about computers – from what he'd heard, they could be very helpful tools. And he felt that it was all right, to want to visit her at her home – but Percy was not one for wibbly-wobbly _feelings_. Why wasn't he just telling Audrey he'd changed his mind? Why did she make him think bad ideas were good ones?

As they made the commute on foot, he noticed many odd looks being sent in their direction. But a glance of their reflection in a store window reminded him that, probably, the confusion had more to do with the sight of a prim, buttoned-up, starched and ironed fellow being led around by a disheveled and tackily colored nymph.

The minute the door to her flat closed, and she'd ascertained that her roommate was not at home, she seemed entirely in her natural environment. She started up her computer. It awoke slowly, with many bizarre beeps and groans and hums.

To pass the time, Audrey brought out a little colored rectangle she called her "Game-Boy" and turned it on. In a minute Percy, who had never seen a video game before in his life, was utterly engrossed in watching Audrey play 'Tetris.'

~ some time later ~

It was dark outside by the time Audrey had finished explaining the inner workings of her computer, and had taught Percy how to play not only 'Tetris' but a game called 'The Legend of Zelda.' It was the sound of a bells chiming the hour from outside that prompted him to check his watch.

"Oh, good Lord – I've got to leave." He put down the Gameboy, and tried to work out the best way route off of the couch and around the small coffee table.

"No you don't," was Audrey's automatic answer. "Oh, god, is it that late already?"

"Yeah – and I've got so much work to do—" He stood up, knocking his shins against the table.

"So take a break from work." Audrey stretched herself into the empty space he'd left behind. "You work yourself to the bone for your bosses – take one night off. C'mon. I won't tell anyone."

Percy, now three strides away from the couch, turned to look at her. She was smiling at him in a calm, slightly concerned way. And she was making her terrible idea sound perfectly reasonable. She went on, "Stay here. We'll just keep talking. I'll order Chinese food. Or Indian. What do you feel like?"

"I…" Percy got his overcoat and began to fold it over and over itself in his arms. "I actually don't think I've ever tried either of those. Those, um, cuisines."

"What?" She got up, was by his side in a minute. "And you call yourself a Londoner? Give me that coat. You're staying in. Percy, Percy, Percy!" She hung his coat up again. "You're so _old_ for your age…"

"Hey…" He'd been told that before, but he'd always taken it as a compliment. Not so now.

"I mean it, but there's a whole world that you just are shut out from." She shook her head, looking up at him.

He had to laugh. "Audrey, you have _no_ idea." He reached for his coat again. She stopped him, taking his hand in midair. When he looked down at her, there was something in her face that held his gaze, held him silent. Then she reached up on tiptoe and kissed him.

"Stay," she said, very softly.

Stillness. Where a moment ago there had been a rush and chatter, there was only a silence and her focus, entirely centered on him. And there was that _moment_ that had just happened – that unbelievable moment –

He kissed her back, gently and quickly, and couldn't really justify why, except that she tasted like moonthistle tea and she was smiling.

Then the door opened, and Audrey's roommate entered, dragging a boy behind her and talking. "So we'll just stop here real quick before—hey, Audrey, hey, Fred – _oh my god_, that's not Fred!"

Percy and Audrey were broken apart now. Audrey's roommate laughed loudly and covered her mouth with her free hand. "Oh my god, that's so funny, I thought that was Fred at first, _oh man_, but that's crazy! But look at that hair!"

"Percy—" Audrey reached for his hand. Percy turned away, taking his cloak.

"Jennifer," Audrey turned to her roommate, "This is Percy. Percy is one of Fred and George's brothers—"

"Oh? Why didn't you introduce me? Oh, oh, am I interrupting something?"

"Audrey." Percy stood in front of her, resolutely ignoring her roommate for the time being. "Thank you very much for… for showing me the computer, and the… the games. Thank you. Goodnight." He nodded to Audrey's roommate and the boy and pushed past them, into the hallway. Suddenly it was all too confining, he had to get out of there, had to get out of that _Muggle_ space surrounded by all these strange people… he had to forget how Audrey had looked at him as he'd forced his way out.

Out on the street, Percy found a lamppost to lean against. He had messed that up. He was smart enough to know that. She deserved a more graceful good-bye – more of a resolution – than _that_. But Percy wasn't very good at any of that.

He stepped out into the street – and almost got run over by a car. He ran back up onto the sidewalk, heart pounding, thinking _'Goddamned Muggles and their cars, they're lethal, positively lethal, and yet the cars are handed out to any sixteen-year-old_.'

_That_ was the answer to 'why not.' Audrey was a Muggle. Inherently lower intelligence, a less binding sense of ethos, and absolutely ignorant of the world that Percy lived and breathed. She may as well have belonged to another planet entirely – she wasn't worth getting so worked up over. She would never understand him.

Percy Apparated home to his flat. He glanced at himself in the mirror over his desk, scowling at what he saw. Audrey's roommate had mistaken him for Fred – never. Not in a million years.

As he drew the windows shut and set to work organizing the piles of envelopes that had arrived in his hours of absence, he noticed for the first time that there was an Indian take-out restaurant across the street from his flat.


	3. Chicken Tikka Masala

It had been October, the last time Percy had seen Audrey. Now it was December. And like clockwork, Percy fell ill. He always fell ill in December. This time, he wasn't even _trying_ to adhere to a schedule. Why did his immune system have to take a holiday, when he did not?

Except Percy did get a holiday, when even Umbridge noticed Percy and his new entourage of tissues and sniffles. She ordered that he take the day of work to recover and stop infecting the rest of the office. Well. He couldn't ignore a direct order, could he?

So he trusted his fellow undersecretaries to be efficient and punctual (whom was he kidding, he'd come back to find the place in shambles) and slept in on a Tuesday morning. And for the rest of the day he stayed in bed, catching up an a few excellent biographies, as well as an analysis of the nineteenth century language shifts.

He didn't feel hungry in the least until around sundown. Then it smacked him all at once – sore muscles, runny nose, and less energy than a Demiguise on tranquilizing spells, and hunger. He still tried to focus on the words on the page, but they swam, unable to leave an impression on him as they were overwhelmed by the idea of "Hunger."

He realized it had become too dark to read. They only light in his flat came from outside. He craned his neck to see the garishly lit up Indian restaurant. It seemed merry to him, full of health and warmth and maybe sitar music.

Percy stood up, finding he didn't have anywhere near enough energy to try cooking. He could muster up the energy to pull on decent clothes – and scrape up his stash of Muggle money from a desk drawer (always be prepared).

Then he carried himself out the door through sheer force of will. The chilly air of the stairwell woke him up sufficiently, so that he could at least walk like a civilized human being. As he crossed the street, snowflakes whipped between his eyes and his glasses.

Before the door of the restaurant - he didn't even know what it was called – he hesitated. It was all ridiculous – Secretary to the Minister sneaking bites out of a… a… his stomach grumbled and he couldn't quite remember why he was supposed to be so outraged. Muggle. That was it. He pushed the door open – and was almost knocked over by a wave of warm air, heavy with spices and _noisy_ with talk. Percy never thought he would appreciate the sound of a little chatter.

His mouth was watering already for he-didn't-know-what food. His knees were knocking as he entered.

The waiter politely showed him to a table for one. The menu was placed in his hand, and he experienced again the strange sensation of reading without comprehension, of meaningless words jumping out at him, begging to be understood. Here and there were words he understood – _chicken_, and _rice_, and _gravy_, _gravy_ was always good. He was still staring when someone approached the table.

"I—I would like… um… I would…"

He might have stammered inconclusively 'til closing time, but a voice at his ear said, "You might like the chicken tikka masala."

Percy cleared his throat. "Very good, then, I'll have one chicken tikka masala, the usual, please. How much will that be?"

"One apology, groveling, would be _really_ nice."

Percy jumped, dropping his Muggle money. Audrey stood at his elbow, regarding him with an evaluating, precise stare. "Audrey! What a – surprise to see you here." Then he blurted, "Did you follow me here?"

"Follow you here?" she repeated. "I'm here with friends. I _have_ other friends than you."

"Oh – um – good."

"What happened?" She leaned slightly over him. "I thought we had something, then you just drop off the map. Was it something I did, Percy?"

A waiter tapped on her shoulder. "Pardon me, Miss." Then he stood in front of Percy, smiling as if he was determined to ignore the drama unfolding before him. "And what will you have tonight, sir?"

"Um… um…" Percy checked the menu again. "Chicken tikka masala, and… water."

"Very good, sir. That's one of our most popular dishes." The waiter took the menu away and left.

Percy took advantage of the momentary silence to say to Audrey, "Look, I'm sick and I'm _very_ hungry, and I don't want to offhandedly say something that might be used against me—"

"I'm not going to use anything against you – I, just, miss, you." She folded her arms, like she was trying to curl in on herself. "I wondered why you didn't want to see me."

Percy's mouth betrayed himself again. "You – you did?"

She nodded in answer. He was astounded.

He opened his mouth to apologize, but bit it down – one did not ever apologize to a Muggle, it was flatly ridiculous and –"Mistakes were made," he said. "I'm sorry." That's right, he was sick. Nothing had to make sense. "I should have…"

"Acted like a decent human being?"

He nodded. He must be delirious, for her to have this effect on him. "I'm just – not looking for a romantic relationship right now."

"I _got_ that. Thanks. Did you have to just abandon me, though?"

He felt like he was being scolded by his mother. He hung his head and mumbled.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said, I'm sorry."

She didn't stop scrutinizing him. "Is this why Fred and George warned me about you?"

"What?"

"Fred and George told me off for hanging around with you. They wouldn't say exactly why. Is it because you're a jerk who can't articulate his feelings on pain of death?"

"That is _not_ – yes. Yes. That is exactly why. I cannot articulate any feelings that come my way, and therefore I am a jerk. Are you happy now?"

She gave a small smile. "You _are_ sorry. Okay. Meet up for tea tomorrow?"

"Sure." He sighed, defeated. "Same time, same place?"

"Sure. And this time, no flaking out. See you then, Percy."

She walked away, and for an instant he was too distracted by the sway of her skinny legs as she walked to remember why he was there.

His chicken tikka masala arrived. Percy's fork was already in his trembling hand. He didn't question how the meat and rice smelled, or whether the Muggle restaurateur had observed any sort of hygiene regulations. Instead, he dug in.

He had never tasted anything so delicious. What had he been missing all these years? English cuisine was paste and pudding compared to _this_.

When he paid his tab and went home, he felt better than he had in weeks. He slept like a top, and when he woke up, the worst of his cold was over.

* * *

><p>AN: On the bright side, readers, there will be nowhere near a delay of two months before the next chapter! Thanks for every fave and review, and thanks for reading!


	4. Neuromancer

Summer was in the air. Some weeks ago a small, gilt-edged invitation had found its way to Percy's mailbox – inviting him to the wedding of his brother, Bill, and Fleur, that stunning French girl who had been the Beauxbatons champion for the Triwizard Tournament.

Percy had read the wedding announcement, of course, and had heard through word of mouth, but it was still a bit startling to have hard-and-fast evidence in front of him.

He didn't write back, and he didn't plan to attend. But he kept the invitation on his dresser table, where he saw it every day as he went to work – like a sore tooth he _had_ to bite on.

On an ordinary Wednesday, two days before Bill's wedding, a special informative Assembly was called. Percy arrived early and got a seat in the front row, reading a book in the meantime. Right on schedule, the admirable Eunomia Colliers, head of Human Resources, began the seminar. As she made her introductory speech, Percy glimpsed an Obliviator standing behind her. He was recognizable at once by his long, grey uniform cloak with its star-and-moons shaped clasp.

Finally, Eunomia reached the end of her flashcards for the opening speech, and introduced her companion. "I have the honor of presenting to you one of our most distinguished young Obliviators. In the interest of continuing to, um, stabilize Muggle-wizard relations, and empower us all in these difficult times, Mr., um, Ollivander – Linus Ollivander – has offered to teach you all the basic, adult-friendly Memory Charm."

Someone behind Percy sniggered.

Linus Ollivander took the floor. His pale eyes scanned the room. He looked intelligent, neat as a pin, and as though he was silently judging everyone in sight. Percy approved of him at once.

"The casting of a sufficient and well-balanced Memory Charm," Ollivander began, "requires several key components, but the first one to master is _timing_. Once you have judged a Memory Charm to be necessary, do not hesitate to apply it. And try to make absolutely sure that you only need to cast _one_ – but make sure that it's not too strong, either." He continued to explain, in precise, clear steps that Percy found very easy to take notes on. When he was finished, he paused for exactly six seconds, then asked, "Any questions?"

"Yeah, how's your _sister_?" demanded a man, and Percy would have bet money it was the selfsame sniggerer from before. There were other eruptions of laughter.

Mr. Ollivander's demeanor became significantly chillier. "Fine."

Sister – Percy didn't pay attention to gossip, but this had actually been in the news – some scandal about Linus Ollivander's sister, involved with a Muggle, who had tried to steal her magic? Percy didn't remember what the true story turned out to be. But it had been a blow to the reputation of a very ancient and prestigious family.

It just went to show, Percy thought to himself. No family, no person, was safe from Muggle influence. He let a short sigh in and out, listening with only half an ear to the questions and answers. Tomorrow he was going to meet Audrey at a street corner she liked. Protocol – and the example of Ollivander here – would demand he stand her up. Should he, then?

'_Heck no_,' he thought, adapting one of Audrey's pet phrases. He'd already walked out on his family. He'd walked out on Audrey, too, once, but for some unfathomable reason she had forgiven him. That was more than his whole family had done. And – it was _Audrey_.

Satisfied in an illogical way by that conclusion, he paid close attention for the rest of the Q&A. When it was finished, he got up and went to thank Mr. Ollivander for his lecture. But, in the crowd or outside, the Obliviator was nowhere to be found, as though he'd just faded away.

Percy frowned, then shrugged. Obliviators had a way of doing that.

ooo

The next afternoon Percy set off on his –

Not a date, Percy didn't _do_ dates, and that was completely not his intention with Audrey. He went on an adventure with Audrey. That was the word she liked. She'd grown tired of teashops, she said, and of the same old streets she walked all day. She wanted to suck the marrow out of life, and Percy found himself following gladly.

With her he was discovering an entirely new side of London – cloisters, silent theaters, churches, and old markets, restaurants and churchyards and parks. She took him into all manner of shops, but Percy didn't feel ashamed by his frugality; Audrey lived on a tight budget too, and was past mistress in the fine art of window shopping. But bookstores were the one thing neither could resist. And Percy had never realized before, confined to Diagon Alley and its environs, what a treasure trove of bookstores London offered. These trips made the highlight of Percy's week, even above figuring out and perfecting a new filing system. He looked forward to them; and developed a fondness for London itself, for the character of its streets and sounds of its traffic. During his workday, he'd just find an excuse to leave the office and sit outside, taking in the scenery. He'd been living in London for two years now, but had never been really aware of what was around him. Now, he let himself think, foolishly, he was falling in love with the city.

Now he let Audrey lead him up and down streets so narrow that no motor car could possibly, logically squeeze through without magic, yet they did – until she found the shop she was looking for.

"Orsino's, yep, read about it on the Internet. C'mon!"

Inside, Orsino's was a bit dusty, dim, cramped, and crooked, but Percy had learned to embrace some dust and crookedness in a good bookstore. He carefully stepped around the stacks, so as to disturb nothing, while Audrey traipsed out of sight as if she was a special new category of book-nymph.

For his part, Percy sought out books on the medieval period; he was developing a fondness for that era. He was just leafing through a book on how Arabic science contributed to the Renaissance when he heard raised voices from the nearby stairwell. The argument sounded like it came from upstairs.

As feet descended the stairway, Percy could make out the words, "For the last time, I don't know where my sister is, and I would be under no obligation to tell you if I did." A florid, black-haired man, wearing the nametag "Sebastian Mellows: Store Owner. Ask Me Something!" was very nearly forcing another man down the stairwell.

Percy started. The other man was a wizard, in full robes, complete with a hat. Then he started again, recognizing Albert Runcorn.

Runcorn, shoving Mellows' hands off of him, "When I do find your sister, I may well press charges against you for refusing to comply – "

"I will ask you one more time, politely: Get. Out of. My store." Three steps above, Sebastian Mellows towered over Runcorn. But Percy was confused: Mellows didn't _look_ like a wizard in the least…

Runcorn turned away, seething – and caught sight of Percy. Belatedly the youth tried to hide in his book, but Runcorn already called, "Weasley! What are _you_ doing here?"

"Um."

Mellows remained where he was, watching the two of them. Percy cleared his throat. "I might ask you the same thing."

"_I _am investigating a Muggle-born, so-called witch. Have you heard of Viola Mellows?"

Before Percy could answer, the sound of booted feet at a run broke his train of thought. Audrey bounded onto the scene. "Percy, look, it's one of my favorite novels of all time, it's called Neuromancer, and it's all about machines and computers and it totally predicts the Internet, and –" She stopped, taking in the tension of the scene. Neither Mellows nor Percy looked at her, but Runcorn stared at her as though she was mold on his dinner. "Did you come here," he turned to Percy, "_with_ that Muggle?"

"That what?" Audrey asked.

"Good God, Weasley, I expected so much better of you!"

"What did you call me, sir?" Now Audrey sounded angry.

"Can't you see – just _looking_ at her –" Runcorn gestured. Percy had to obey his superior: he turned and looked at her. He saw scuffed boots, the huge holes in her stocking, the garish pink-and-black check dress, frazzled hair. He looked everywhere except her face.

"—what a degenerative being she is?"

Percy opened and shut his mouth. Some fire was kindled in his chest, and a stone was on his tongue. Idly he put down the book he was holding, because his hands had clenched into fists. "That's not –" he swallowed, "—what I see when I look at her."

Runcorn stared at _him_ now. "Is that so? Have you really cracked? The best mind of your generation…"

Percy bit back a retort, he didn't even know what he would have said – that he had known so many better minds than his, that Audrey, who questioned and protested and reflected on herself, had a better mind than his by far –

"I don't mind telling you—" Runcorn put a hand on Percy's shoulder and leaned in, "Old family shame of mine, my great-grandfather threw my great-aunt into a mental asylum because she said to him at Christmas, 'I'm in love with a Muggle.'"

"A mental asylum?" Audrey's voice cracked, and now Percy could put a word to what was blazing in every fiber of his being: Rage.

He quietly pulled out his wand. "Let me take you aside for a minute."

Runcorn looked relieved. "I was about to suggest exactly that. Now," as they turned a corner, entering the graphic novels section, Percy turned quickly and met Audrey's eye. He mouthed, _Stay there_.

"I won't tell anyone about this," Runcorn went on, "for now, but I expect you to drop this slut immediately, and I—"

"_Obliviate._" Percy's enunciation was low, but perfect. A shimmer of silver light appeared in the air, and Runcorn's eyes glazed over. Percy put his wand away. "You," he said clearly, "will drop the search for Viola Mellows at once. You only dropped by Sebastian Mellows' store for a few minutes, and he was very helpful in telling you that he knows nothing of his sister's whereabouts. You did not see me here today, nor anyone else. You will leave this shop at once. Oh," he added with a smile, "and you will petition to give Linus Ollivander a pay raise. He is very good at what he does."

Percy turned Runcorn around, and shoved him towards the shop door.

When Runcorn was well on his way down the street, Percy shut the door after him. Then he let out a breath he didn't even realize he'd been holding. "That was embarrassing."

He didn't want to turn around. He felt the same fear that would have spurred him out of the door when Audrey kissed him. But he swallowed that fear, and turned around.

Audrey was leaning against a bookshelf, shrinking in on herself in her baggy jacket. Her upper face was entirely covered by her hands. What Percy could see was bright red and wet with tears and he felt a rush of warmth toward her – some kind of wrenchingly maternal instinct. Mr. Mellows was talking to her in a calm voice, but Percy somehow knew what Audrey needed. He crossed the space between them in three strides and hugged her to him, letting her sobs explode against his shoulder before she relaxed, breathed deeply.

Mr. Mellows met Percy's eye overhead. Percy had never studied Leglimency, but he thought that he read the shopkeeper's intentions perfectly clearly: I know exactly what _you_ are, and what _she_ isn't, but if you care enough about this girl to console her, I'm on your side.

Out loud, Mr. Mellows said "I'm terribly, _terribly_ sorry, Miss. Would you like a cup of tea? Or a used book – on the house?"

"You're very kind, sir," Audrey turned away from Percy, but one hand still gripped his shoulder. "But I'd really have to pay for any book – thanks, though – and I want to talk to Percy alone."

"All right, then. But feel free to return to Orsino's anytime."

But by the time he had finished saying this, Audrey was already halfway out the door. Percy followed her, and she set off – thankfully – in the opposite direction Runcorn had taken. For the length of four blocks they walked. Percy never let himself quite catch up with Audrey. Finally, as they were passing a small park she turned without stopping.

"You still there?"

"Yes."

She turned into the park gate. He followed. She sat down on a bench that was beaded with wet from the drizzle. As he sat down beside her, she said in a dull, sing-song voice, "I saw the best minds of my generation, destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical."

"What is _that_ from?"

"Howl." If Audrey noticed how little Percy understood of that answer, she gave no sign. "So that guy said that you were the best mind of your generation."

"Oh, I am not. Believe me, I'm not. I'm just… good at testing."

"You were too good to hang out with the likes of me."

"That man's wrong, all right? He's an idiot and absolutely wrong."

"How do you _know _him?"

'_You should lie_,' he thought rapidly. '_Lie, say he was a random loony and you've never seen him before. Better yet, do a Memory Charm. Now. Before she asks any more questions_. _You can do it!_" But as he watched Audrey's face, a line uttered by Percy's grandmother – who had been, when he knew her, frail and distant, but still fiery – rose unbidden to his mind: "I do so loathe a traitor."

If he modified her memory, he would be betraying her – pure, plain, and simple. Going behind her back so that he, Percy, could sidestep the issue and pretend that Runcorn's verbal abuse – which Percy had done nothing to stop – had never happened. He felt a sudden urge to find an Obliviator, get him or her drunk, and ask them what they _really_ thought of their jobs.

"I… work with him."

"How could you work with a man like that? What did he mean about mental asylums?"

"He was – he was joking."

"No he wasn't! Do you think this is funny?"

"No! Absolutely not."

"By what law could us just hanging out be grounds for being locked away and left to rot?"

"By extremely unjust and outdated laws," Percy said hurriedly. "I'm sure they've been overturned. I'll look it up when I… get…"

Audrey's expression was indescribable, as though there were ten different things she wanted to shout at him and couldn't pick one. "I was being _rhetorical_," she said. She fell back on the bench, and as Percy didn't know what to say, they lapsed into silence.

After a while she said, "I spent some time in a so-called mental asylum."

He stared at her. She was looking straight into the drizzle. "Why? I mean, what for?"

"Eating disorder," she mumbled. "My parents weren't happy."

He had no idea what an eating disorder was, and for some reason that made him feel worse.

Finally she said, "Percy, please tell me what really happened in there."

"How very Ravenclaw of you," he muttered.

"Beg pardon?"

He sighed. "Give me… a day."

"To sort it out yourself? Or to phrase an alibi?" Her hazel eyes were fixed on him. He couldn't look away, afraid she would spontaneously develop the skill of Leglimency.

"To get it straight." They couldn't have another rift, he _would_ come up with something – didn't someone in the Muggle-worthy Excuses Office owe him a favor? "I'll meet you—"

"At my flat," she said sharply. "Seven o'clock. We'll get dinner."

"Indian food?"

"Maybe. Don't keep me waiting."

She stood up. "I'm going home now."

"Audrey—"

"Yeah?"

"My brother's getting married tomorrow." The words were so strange to say out loud. He hadn't phrased them out loud to anyone yet.

"Are you going to the wedding?" she asked testily.

"No. I wasn't quite invited." He swallowed. "But… I wanted to tell you."

She made no move. "I'll see you at seven, then."

"I'm sorry."

The word was abrupt, almost curling in on itself in the drizzle. Audrey nodded, to show she'd heard, and then walked away.

Percy returned home, still rattled. He decided, before he thought too hard, to do a little light reading, just to calm his nerves. Recalling (unwillingly) something Runcorn had said, he decided to look up the laws on incarceration on grounds of… Muggle… association. Some obscure sub-set of laws with a title like that. He found a law tome (bought at a Ministry library clearance sale, a whole set for just a Sickle!) that looked promising. He flipped the pages with an optimistic feeling. Surely it was all overturned decades ago.

Oh. Oh, no.

He got out a couple of newer books for reference, checked and double-checked their bibliographies, checked a few entries in the dictionary, and then went and poured himself a glass of port.

It was, he had learned, still perfectly legal for a father, mother, godparent, any legal guardian including older sibling, to have a young man or woman (almost always a woman) institutionalized for courting a Muggle with the intent to marry. Sometimes the family's daughters would only be kept away until the family could find a decent wizard willing to marry her. Other times the wardens of the asylum would be paid to "correct" the girls of their sickness. The practice had started in the seventeenth century, and families offered excuses such as "taking a sabbatical," "visiting aunts in the country," or "doing her world tour." And the law was still on the books – only two witnesses were needed to lock a girl away, not that there had been any such internments in the last decade. And any heartbroken Muggle who came searching for his sweetheart was bound to be sent home with a Memory Charm blasting his intentions away – if he was lucky.

Percy poured himself a second glass of port. Oh, _heck_ no. Something was rotten, and he had never noticed it before. And he had to come to terms with it, while at the same time hiding it from Audrey. This would make tomorrow _very_ interesting.

ooooo

A/N: Hope that you enjoyed this chapter. Feel free to leave a review!

Also, if the character of Linus Ollivander charmed you, then you might enjoy my longer stories 'The Ollivander Children' and 'The Ollivanders at War,' in which he figures quite prominently, and that fuss over his sister and a Muggle is explained. In the meantime, stay tuned for the next chapter of 'Asking for Trouble'!


	5. Magic Uncovered

Audrey's flat was not the neatest place, and she would be the first to admit it, but she liked to think it was homey and welcoming. However, in anticipation of Percy's arrival, it had been swept and dusted and everything visible scrupulously straightened – and if it couldn't be straightened, it was stuffed into a closet, drawer, or under her bed. She accomplished all of this immediately after she woke up, and then attempted to spend the rest of the day productively, wondering how the conversation that night would go, how much she might find herself telling Percy, how much Percy might finally reveal about himself.

Now it was five to seven. Audrey had just put the kettle on, and was sitting down to a crossword puzzle. She was hesitating on how to spell "Clepsydra" when a knock came at the door – a frantic, urgent pounding.

She jumped up and opened the door. There stood Percy Weasley, his clothes in disarray, his hair a mess, a crack in the left lens of his glasses, and smelling faintly of smoke. But nothing compared to his face – his mouth twisted down in anguish, his eyes wide open and barely blinking.

"Audrey," he croaked, "are you safe? Are you alone?"

"Yes – yes, Percy, come in, calm down."

He had no sooner entered than he swiveled on his heel, shut the door, and took something out of his pocket. It looked like a thin rod of wood. He pointed it several times at the door, then turned around and pointed it at each of the windows, then even at the heating vents. Until he finished this, he did not listen to Audrey as she cried, "Percy, what are you _doing_?"

He turned to her. "Has anyone strange talked to you today? Have you noticed anything?"

"Um… the bum on the street corner has …"

"No, no. _Important_ things, explosions, traffic snarls—"

"Percy? What's happened? Stop looking at the windows! They're shatterproof."

He ran to a window and glanced up and down the street, then closed the blinds. "Are we safe? Are we safe?" He still held that rod of carved wood.

She tried to speak more loudly. "Percy, calm down. We're safe in here, safe—"

Then the breath was knocked out of her: he grabbed and held her in a hug so tight it was almost like he needed her, just to remain standing.

Awkwardly, she fit her hands around him and tried to speak soothingly. "Percy, it's okay, we're okay. Just calm down and have some tea."

He kept holding her. It wasn't bad at all, Audrey reflected, shifting to hold him more comfortably. But it was also very good when he relaxed and let her go, as the kettle was screaming its head off.

"Do you want cream or sugar?"

"Cream or sugar," he muttered. "World falling to pieces and she asks for cream or sugar."

"I've got lemon, too, if you like."

"No – can't stand lemon – cream, please. Oh, Audrey, you are a _brick_. A true, solid, salt-of-the-earth brick."

"You sure know how to pay a girl a compliment," she said uneasily, setting the full-to-the-brim cup in front of him.

He held the cup in his hands, inhaling its steam deeply as she hurriedly got out milk and honey, and butter, even though there were no scones.

When she turned back to him, he was laying the rod on the table. Closer up, she saw that it was indeed made out of wood, prettily carved.

"Audrey," he said, "will you take a look at this?"

"Shan't, until you take a drink of tea," she told him. He nodded. She took the stick of wood and inspected it, while he took a long, long drink. She ran her hand up and down it, very carefully. "This is beautiful," she told him. "I like the little leaves… my grandfather carved wood, did you know? He made Christmas ornaments for the whole family… What is it?"

She handed it back to him, with great care. Percy noticed her tenderness, and his face softened into something almost like a smile.

"This is a magic wand," he said.

"… Er, what?"

"It's my magic wand. Because I'm a wizard."

Audrey stared at him for a minute, then started to laugh. She couldn't help it; Percy was absolutely the last person in the world she would have imagined having anything at all to do with magic.

"This isn't funny," Percy said. "This is life or death."

"Don't you mean 'toad or newt'?" She asked, giggling, and trying to sober up, but the expression on his face just made it harder.

"I mean _your_ life or death, Audrey! Watch!" Grasping the wand in his hand, he waved it gallantly in the air and brought it down again. A shower of sparks erupted from it – blue and gold.

Audrey jumped back, her laughter gone. "Where – where did that come from?"

"It came from the wand. You saw, just a minute ago, there's no place for any seams, any tricks, any fireworks or whatever you call them – "

"Do something else."

Percy cast about, and his eye settled on the Gameboy, left on the table beside the couch. He pointed his wand at it, and said, loudly and with clear diction, "_Wingardium Leviosa_."

The Gameboy gently floated in the air, and Percy kept his eyes focused on it as it soared well over their heads, and then fell lightly into Audrey's cupped hands.

"Now," Percy said, "I know that as an individual of the, um, non-magical persuasion, you will find it difficult to believe in magic, even to doubt the evidence of your own senses, but –"

"_That was bloody wicked!_" Audrey exclaimed. "That was amazing! Absolutely amazing! You've been able to do this all the time? Real magic? It's real! I can't believe it! Oh, this is wonderful!" She jumped up and, grabbing Percy by the shoulder, kissed him again and again on each cheek. "You're amazing, amazing, amazing! Please, please do more!"

"You… you think I'm amazing?" Percy said weakly.

"Well, I knew you were amazing before you showed off your magic – magic! _Magic!_ – but this just, this takes the cake, so to speak!"

"I'm glad that you believe me," Percy took another long sip of tea, his ears turning very pink, "but this is serious. I can't demonstrate any more magic. I have to tell you…" He looked her straight in the eyes, and maybe it was the faint traces of soot on his forehead, but _damn_ his eyes were blue. "I'm going to explain to you about what really happened in the bookshop yesterday."

"Oh." Audrey grew sober at once. "All right. Go ahead."

"Magic," Percy drew a great, gulping breath, "doesn't just make things fly, or create sparks. All magic obeys the will of the witch or wizard who channels it. Magic can damage things. Magic can hurt people. It can… it can corrupt minds. Even without a specific spell, if you grow up with magic, surrounded by it you learn to think a certain way. A lot of wizards believe that having magic makes you automatically superior to people who don't – people like you. We call them—"

"Muggles."

He nodded. "Yes. And magic _doesn't_ make you superior to Muggles, I know that, but – it does mean that magic can hurt you, in worse ways than it can hurt me, and you have utterly no defenses against it."

"And you decided to tell me this now – because of yesterday?"

"No. Yesterday isn't a problem. Runcorn is not a problem. The problem is that—" he covered his mouth with one hand, he looked like he was about to cry.

"You can tell me," she hoped her voice was reassuring. "You can tell me anything."

"We've been at war for a long time," Percy said slowly, "but the war has now come to life. The bad guys have won."

"The bad guys?"

"The wizards who would do you harm – who would hurt you in every possible way – you and everyone you know, just because you're not magical. Today they invaded the Ministry of Magic – the place where I work."

"Ministry of _Magic_?"

"Um, yes…"

"You have your own ministry in the government?"

"We have our own government. Now…"

"You mean you're not subjects of the Queen? You don't pay taxes? Do you even have a British birth certificate?"

"Audrey, this is kind of important. Listen. They invaded the Ministry, they murdered our Minister, and they've taken over. Everything has gone wrong, and it's only going to get worse." He swallowed, and he said in a shuddering voice, "The people who want to kill you are the ones in charge now. Audrey –"

He was pleading as he said her name, and she answered, "I'm right here." jumping over to him and hugging him, tightly. He started to cry, and she began to feel that she should be afraid – things were fundamentally wrong.

When he seemed to have calmed down, she asked, "And you came… to me?"

He nodded.

"Do all Muggles have a wizard looking out for them?"

He loosened his grip on her, and looked up, smiling weakly. "I don't know. But I don't think so. It's not just that I wanted to tell – to protect you – Audrey, I wanted to _see_ you. I wanted to see your smile, because – because that kind of helps me believe that everything will be all right. I should have told you long ago – you're so dear to me – I'm not even making sense."

Audrey smiled. "It's okay." She kissed him, feeling that this time, things might end a bit better. And they did. He returned the kiss, his arms wrapping around her to press them closer together.

Abruptly, she pulled away. "So what was it you were doing when you entered?"

"Protection spells," he answered, his voice suddenly rather dreamy. "Shielding spells. Alarm spells."

"To alarm…?"

"Me."

"I guess you're staying for a bit, then."

"I guess so…? What are you reaching for?"

"Take out menus. You're staying here tonight."

"I – I am? But there's—"

"No buts." Audrey pointed to the bathroom. "Go and wash up your face. You look like you've been through the wars. I'm sure a little unpredictability will only do you good." As he got up, looking back at her in some disbelief, she very casually began to study the menus. She dropped the pretense once he left the room, looking after him with concern. She curled up tight on the couch, thinking. She didn't understand what was happening – and she didn't appreciate having secrets kept from her – but she knew enough to be afraid, and to start taking precautions. And maybe she didn't know Percy as well as she thought she did, but she saw a lonely young man on the verge of falling apart. She didn't know how his sort of man would fall apart, but she didn't intend to wait and find out.

As he re-entered the living room, his face significantly cleaner, he caught sight of her expression and stopped. "What are you planning?"

"Nothing except a night of take-out, and talking. I've got a lot of questions, Percy Weasley."

"About… what?"

"For starters, I want to know everything about magic."

Percy looked very slightly alarmed, as his eyes darted from her face to the menus in her hands. "Well, I… everything?"

"Everything."

* * *

><p>ooooo<p>

A/N: Percy's prejudices about Muggles are about to take a whacking.  
>I don't feel that this is the end of this story, but on the other hand, I can't say where the end is. Suffice to say, wait for the "Complete" marker on this story.<p>

Reviews always make my day! Feel free to let me know what you think. Thanks for reading!


	6. The Goodbye

Audrey lost track of the number of times she gave thanks that her roommate was on holiday in Wales for the week, or the number of blessings she heaped on the noble, nay, heroic sport of rugby, that had drawn her away.

The next twenty hours were very strange ones for Audrey, but very happy. Between dinner, washing up (which went by very quickly with the aid of magic) and a half-hearted attempt to get some sleep, Percy sketched out for her, with precision and detail, a breathtaking world of magic and tradition that she would never have guessed existed beneath the cobbles, between the buildings, above the rooftops of the city she called home. He enchanted her poster map of England (replica of an 1846 print) to make the biggest magical communities in Britain glow like faint stars. He demonstrated all manner of spells for her, and together they pored over a history book and he amended and embellished on what she'd thought she knew.

He tapped her radio with his wand to let it pick up the Wizarding Wireless Network – the news programs were out, but there was an old radio drama on. Surprisingly, for a radio program written by, for, and about wizards, it was very boring. Percy asked Audrey if he could shut it off after the commercial break – he didn't want someone to notice the signal reaching the house.

She liked to think that it was comforting, to him, because he loved to explain things and to be relied on, to enlighten her with facts that any wizarding child would have taken as a matter of course. She made jokes, she ordered food, kept the place cozy, everything to keep his spirits up. She touched him, rubbing his shoulders, brushing his hair out of his eyes, straightening his glasses, liberties she never would have taken before. But he let her, and he responded with warmth. It was as though, she thought, he craved more affection and love than he would let himself accept.

But all of those paled to the moment, around seven the next morning (neither one of them could sleep very much, Percy because he was still walking the floor and worrying, and Audrey because she was trying to absorb all the new things she was learning), when Percy took out his photographs.

"These are my friends and I in the Gryffindor Common Room… that's Oliver Wood, Quidditch Captain, he and I were kind of buddies—"

"Is your face _painted_?"

"It was taken right after we won the Quidditch Cup in seventh year, I was in high spirits."

"Obviously."

"… That's just the view from Ravenclaw Tower, I just thought it was a really nice view."

"What were you doing in Ravenclaw Tower?"

"Um… er… well, I had a girlfriend who was a Ravenclaw but we broke up shortly after…" he glanced at Audrey nervously. She shrugged and signaled for him to go on. He hesitated, glancing down at the wallet in his hands. Like most wizard things, this wallet was enchanted to hold much more on the inside than it promised on the outside, but he still felt the need to clear his throat before saying, "Well. Last batch."

"Go on!" Audrey said, not wishing to appear too eager.

"This is my family," he said, opening up a plethora of photographs featuring young men, sunny countryside, and a lot of red hair.

"They're not moving," Audrey observed.

"No… They kept sneering at me, Ginny kept trying to walk out of the frame and the twins were just making very rude gestures. I put a Freezing Charm on them. My family and I have never really…" He trailed off.

The first photograph was a living room, shabby-looking, with no single piece of furniture matching any other. Three little boys, plus a smaller Percy, were crowded around a radio. In front of the fire, a muscled teenager was lying on his back, eyes closed. On the couch a skinny man beamed at the scene, while a plump woman was totally absorbed in the baby on her lap.

"Wow… you mentioned you had a big family, but this really brings it home," Audrey said, counting.

"There's one missing. Bill's the one who took the photo in the first place, standing in the kitchen door." Percy named each of his brothers, and the little baby as Ginevra, dubbed 'Ginny' at about two months old. The next photograph showed Ron, the youngest brother, bent over a chessboard with a serious, calculating look on his face. He was opposite a black-haired teen who had turned around and was giving the camera a big grin, but Ron looked like he wasn't even aware of the camera at all.

"That's Ron over the chessboard – it's a good photo, but weird because he almost _never_ looks like that. But put a chessboard in front of him and he'll tear you to pieces."

"And the boy with glasses?"

"That—oh. You don't know." He leaned back and looked at her. "You actually don't know."

"What? No, I don't know, Percy, I didn't know any of this until you started to explain it."

"I mean, it's just so weird to think that you have no idea – well, to Ron and the family, he's just Harry. His parents died when he was really young, and he's Ron's best friend, and now he's practically a seventh son. Not that I _mind_, he's a good egg, good enough. But he never really liked me, I think. But to the rest of the world, he's Harry Potter. I grew up knowing his name, wondering what a fantastic wizard he must be. But he's really average, when you know him."

"Wait – _the_ Harry Potter? That one you were telling me about, with the scar and the thingies happening to him?"

"Yeah, _the_ Harry Potter. He's just – Harry. It's better to think of him, for me, as Harry, that kid who took the place in my family that I couldn't really properly fill because I'm not a loudmouth attention-grabbing Weasley."

A bitter tone had crept into his voice in the last sentence, and Audrey stalled, unsure what to do. Finally she offered, "That's very kind, though, that he has somewhere to go, I mean, that he has your family to rely on."

"Yeah. And Harry's really a good kid – one time, I made scones for breakfast, this was before… sixth year, I think—"

"I didn't know you could cook."

"Well, I try… these days I don't really have time, but Mum was always happy to help me learn. And I made scones, and Fred and George were horrible about it, said they tasted like parchment and graded essays – that's why I didn't _tell_ them I was planning on baking, they would have snuck beetles into the currants or something – but Harry was the first one to actually say they tasted good. That's, a little thing, I guess, but it meant something."

Audrey nodded, slowly, wanting to share a wise word or two, but unable to think of any. "Is there any reason why he took to your family?"

"Ron, mostly. And Mum had a lot to do with it. She'll take anyone under her wing – always urging me to invite friends over for the holidays."

"Did you ever?"

"No! I mean – I didn't want them to see where I lived. You can see it's a bit… shabby."

"I think it looks nice."

Percy twisted his mouth. "Mmph. You didn't have to live there. And I didn't want Fred and George to scare my friends away. It's bad enough I have to look after them at school. But… anyway. Show my Mum someone loveless and lonely and she's a complete mother hen. Charlie takes after her – he used to bring in stray cats and dogs all the time, until Dad set up rules." He found a photo of Charlie, and Audrey nodded politely, privately admiring his muscles.

Percy added, "Charlie works with dragons these days."

Audrey gasped. "_Really_? How? What does he do with dragons? How –"

Percy grinned. "I thought you might like to know that. See, there's his badge. He works in a dragon preserve, a sort of wildlife reservation in Romania. He's an insanely talented flyer, wonderful with animals. And here's Mum and Ginny, all grown up."

Audrey would never have guessed that the two women in the picture were witches. Percy's Mum was sweet-faced and smiling, her hair a bit messy, looking perfectly content with the simple, domestic scene around her. The girl next to her could have been any athletic, red-headed, half-grown young woman from Audrey's schooldays, with one arm over her mother's shoulders, the other one clinging to an old broomstick.

"Percy?"

"Yes?"

"Do wizards… ride broomsticks?"

"Oh, yes. All the time."

"Do _you_ have a broomstick you ride?"

"I… did, but I sold it. I never used it, and it was practically falling apart anyway. And I could use the cash."

Audrey looked at the photograph again, trying to see a resemblance between Percy and the witches. "I'd like to meet them."

"They'd like you," he said, a choked note entering his voice.

"Percy—"

"I don't even know if they're still alive – the wedding, dear god, so many of our friends were going to be there, _Harry_ is going to be there – if Harry's there then he'll be their target – I don't even know what's happened to them."

"Is there any way you can find out?"

"No, no, not yet – oh, god, if Harry got my family – if anything's happened to them because of him, I swear I'll—"

"Calm down. Calm down. Don't get mad at Harry, you don't even know what the full story is."

Percy got up and paced the narrow foyer some more. She was sure he was going to wear a hole in the floorboards. While he paced, she got up and looked out the window. The sun was already up; summer brought the early mornings that, usually, she delighted in. "Percy?"

"Yes, Audrey?" His voice cracked, more than he meant it to, she thought.

She had the curtains in a tight fisted hand, but turned to look at him, steadily, to phrase the words she hated to say: "I think—" she took a deep breath, "you need to find out what happened to them."

"_How_?"

"You're a wizard! Take a broomstick and fly to your home!"

"But they'll be looking for me—"

"Who?"

"The – " he lowered his voice, "the people who are in charge now. They'll be watching the sky, watching the owls, the Floo Network, they'll be watching the Burrow."

"What Burrow?"

"It's the name for my family's house – a really old name."

"They'll be watching you anyway, right? What have you got to lose by looking for your parents? What could be easier to explain than a boy trying to make sure his family is okay?"

"They're _not_ my…" he paused, and crossed the space between them. He pulled the curtains shut. "Audrey, I publicly disowned them two years ago."

Audrey fell silent. She leaned back and looked at the photos in his hands again, and thought of the charm he'd mention to freeze his family in place so he could look at them. She looked at Percy again, and the months and months of seeing him hungry and working himself to the bone, with no one at all to talk to, fell into place.

"How publicly?" she asked, eyes narrowing.

"Publicly enough that I can't just go crawling back to them—"

"You are not crawling! You're uneasy and unhappy and you have to know! I know _I_ wouldn't be able to rest until I knew they were all safe – or at least until I knew what _had _happened to them. Why are you giving me that look?"

Percy was giving her a sidelong, studying sort of look. "Maybe you would be a Ravenclaw, after all."

"You've said that twice now… what's that?"

"Ravenclaw is one of the four houses. I was a Gryffindor – that's my family's traditional house – supposed to be the brave students – but the Hat said I'd do well in all four Houses. Slytherin for ambition – and supposed to be for Dark wizards, but some of my best friends were Slytherins in school – Hufflepuff for the hard workers, and Ravenclaw is for the smartest students."

Audrey couldn't help but grin at that. "Well! That's a compliment."

"Clearly I made a terrible Gryffindor, though. Just like I made a terrible Weasley."

"Percy, _stop that_. I don't have a degree in psychology or anything, but I don't need one to know that you've just been putting yourself down, for months and months, and you need to stop. You need closure with your family. Are you going to just act like they're not a part of you, like you don't need this resolved, and hide away in my flat and eat Indian food, or are you going to – to be _brave_, and go and find out what happened?"

He stared at her. "Are you telling me to leave?"

She paused a long time before answering. She lay her hands flat on his chest, looking at the freckles that scattered their way down his neck, trying to find the perfect words.

He asked again, "Audrey, are you telling me to leave?"

"I… I think that you need to know, and you need to find them. More than you need to be here." She looked up at him, even though all she wanted was to bow her head, fold her arms around him, and never let him go. "With me."

She got the first part of her wish: he pulled her into a hug so quickly that her chin collided with his collar and the breath was knocked out of her.

"Audrey," he said, in a strained voice, muffled by her hair, "when I leave, I don't think I can come back."

She didn't answer him. She couldn't. It crashed into her all at once – the realization that this wasn't a pretty role-playing game, with magic wands and flying broomsticks. That there was a war on, a war she could only just begin to imagine, and it was going to take Percy away from her. And she clung to him, her breath coming in great shuddering gasps.

Percy was saying something, and Audrey held her breath to hear, above the pounding of her heart, "—I could never stay long anyway. This has been a stolen night for me. And, Audrey—" he tilted her chin up, and said in a low voice, "this may have been the best night of my entire life. Thank you. I needed this night."

"You needed me?" she didn't mean for it to rise up to a little questioning squeak at the end, but it did. To cover it she said, "But you don't anymore, I guess."

"Audrey, I think that I still do." He hugged her again, and she held him less tightly – the first transition was past. Now the good-bye was beginning. She wouldn't cling to him like she was drowning; she wanted to memorize how he felt in her arms, the awkward grip of his hands on her waist.

"Sometimes we have to do without things we need. My grandmother taught me that," she heard herself say. A wise, meaningless little phrase, that.

Percy swallowed. "You're right." He drew himself back. "Now, what will I – what do I actually need to take with me? Do I need to go into hiding? I need to plan this…"

He was leaving already. She held him, she felt the vibration of his voice in his chest, but he was leaving. "You need anything? Notepad? Groceries?"

"A piece of parchment would be nice – paper, I mean paper."

"Is there a difference?" she asked, a little more brightly than was strictly called for.

"Not really; some words we wizards just use because we don't want to use the Muggle ones. It's – strange. Until I met you, I never thought more in-depth about the way we live apart." He shook his head. "Strange world."

He bent over the lined paper – "Marvelous things, lined parchment…" – and took a pen, and Audrey helped him navigate the clicky end of it.

After about fifteen minutes, he looked up again. "I know I'm in a bad spot when even making lists doesn't help me," he said, giving a weak little gasp that may have been hoping to be a chuckle. "What are you doing?"

"Making sandwiches."

"For…"

"For you. Half of them are Nutella and banana; I'm also putting together cheese and ham, do you like pickles? I like pickles but not everyone does…"

"_How many _sandwiches?" He stood up and walked over to be next to her. "Because I really will probably be returning straight to my flat, sooner or later, and I have food to last, even if – Oh." Audrey had turned to look at him, and she must have looked at him reproachfully, because he changed tack at once. "And I'm very grateful. I just love – Nutella?" he held up the jar and squinted at it. "What _is_ this?"

"It's the greatest thing that Muggles have ever invented. And you _will_ love it. Try some." She pulled out a spoon, scooped out a hefty spoonful of the hazelnut spread, and poked it into his mouth when he started to protest.

"No, no spitting it out. Taste it. Good, isn't it?" She pulled the spoon out and grinned at the look on his face.

"Daf's – er – that _is_ good," he said, wiping his mouth but smiling all the same. "What is it?"

"Hazelnuts and chocolate. And sugar, mostly."

"That's – "

"The most delicious thing you've ever had in your life, and obviously you're going to need to come back for more, right?"

"The number of factors at play are— " he stopped, seeing the look on her face. She was staring at him, her eyes completely fixed on his face. Percy took a moment to consider, and then said, "Yes, I am going to have to come back for more. Sooner or later."

"Wizards might not see a Muggle girl as worth coming back for…" Audrey said quietly, turning back to the cheddar cheese sandwich she was making, "… but no one can argue with Nutella."

"You have… five different types of bread?" Percy asked.

"I have gluten-free friends. And really, sandwiches are all I can cook."

"I'm honored that you're making them for me," he said stiffly. She glanced at him. He was smiling. She supposed that was going to have to do.

ooo

When he actually left, he said, "Well. This is it," exactly five distinct times. He glanced to her windows, just as he had done when he arrived – he'd placed extra enchantments on them, he told her, and on her entire flat. He hefted his canvas bag – stuffed full of sandwiches – and said, "I'm probably worrying too much about everything. If there's one thing my family is, it's resourceful. Bet you Fred and George already have a whole network of friends helping them out. Now, remember, don't tell anyone I was here. Don't tell anyone that you know a wizard, don't let on that you know there's a war. Pretend like you've forgotten me."

She nodded. "I'm not stupid – I'm a Ravenclaw, apparently. Go on, then."

He touched her face. "I'll send you an owl soon. I mean, a letter."

She nodded, again. In an hour, she would come up with eighty-seven perfectly sharp, romantic, witty, _brave _parting remarks, but at the moment all she could think of was to quote _The Princess Bride_ and declare, melodramatically, "_Without one kiss?_" and watch as she and Percy fell into each other's arms.

It wasn't gonna happen.

So instead she stood up on tiptoe and kissed him. "Come back for the Nutella."

He took a quick breath, his mouth tight. He looked down, slightly up again – couldn't meet her eyes – and said, "Thank you, Audrey. For everything."

Then Percy Weasley was out the door, down the hallway, gone.

Audrey closed the door, because it was stupid to stand there, looking lost, after a man who wasn't there anymore. She didn't slide down and collapse on the other side of the door once it was closed; she went into the kitchen, washed off the knives used to make the sandwiches, cleaned up, and turned on a radio to fill up the silence.

A song full of energy and desolation played on the electronic airwaves, reaching thousands of unsuspecting listeners, unaware that a war was on, right this minute, yet feeling the song spoke to them:

"_But I still wake up! I still see your ghost!_

_Oh, Lord, I'm still not sure what I stand for_

_Oh, what do I stand for? What do I stand for?_

_Most nights, I don't know anymore…_

_This is it, boys, this is war!_"

Audrey started to tidy up. After an hour, she gave up and dressed up in her fanciest heels, nicest tights, favorite dress, and a bit of mascara. She went out for tea. It did her heaps of good.

She returned to her apartment to see, from the stairwell, a red-headed man sitting in front of her door. She started to run – wobbly heels notwithstanding – and almost cried out "Percy!" before the man lifted his head and she recognized him. Her jaw fell.

'_My family is nothing if not resourceful_,' she remembered Percy saying.

Fred Weasley stood up, a small backpack in one hand and a too-large grin on his face. "Audrey! Funny story, but can you put me up for the night?"

* * *

><p>AN: I know that this is insanely late, but I hope I've made up for it with a nice lengthy chapter. I can't believe the reception this story has gotten - the love you readers give it is what has turned this story from a two-chapter piece about Percy awkwardly taking tea into some kind of, I don't know, epic bildungsroman that's swung right into the plot of _Deathly Hallows_. I thank you all, and though I can't promise when the next chapter will be, still I invite you to leave a review.

Also, the song that comes on the radio is entirely inaccurate in terms of chronology - it's "Some Nights," by Fun, released in late 2012 - but if the movies feature the Millennium Bridge, I can feature an Early Tens song.


	7. The Visitor

A/N: Thank you for reading! It makes me really happy to see this story get faves, and especially reviews. I'm sorry that the updating is so spotty, but I hope you enjoy the chapters in the meantime. Enjoy Chapter Seven!

* * *

><p>"You look nice," he said appreciatively. "Were you expecting a gentleman caller?" His smile didn't quite reach his eyes.<p>

She didn't answer. She couldn't. He cracked a grin. "What's the matter? You look like you've seen a ghost."

Audrey recoiled. '_Ghosts_?' she thought. '_Are ghosts real, too? Percy never mentioned. What the hell is _Fred_ doing here, saying things like that? Audrey, calm down. It was a joke. Probably._'

She took a deep breath. "This is a surprise, that's all. Where's George?"

"Oh, he's at a friend's."

"Why aren't you together?"

"We're not attached at the hip, alright?" Fred's tone had gotten a bit sharp. "Look, I just need a place to crash for the night. Do you mind if I stay here?"

For a minute Audrey was tempted to say no, just to see if he would pull out his wand. But he was probably in really dire straits, and he thought her place would be safe – he trusted her. "All right, come on in."

She unlocked the door. "But no late-night shenanigans. I have work tomorrow."

"You are a lifesaver, Audrey. A real lifesaver." He planted a grandiose kiss on her cheek.

"You hungry?" she said, smiling thinly.

"Not just now. So! What's up?" he dropped off his electric green backpack on the couch. Audrey began her usual monologue of work complaints, while she forced herself to relax, and avoid picking at a loose thread on her favorite dress. She observed Fred's face – his eyes were lined, and red. He had two-day stubble, which she'd never seen him sport before – not that it didn't suit. He only smiled when she made a deliberate joke, as though he had to remind himself that humor existed. And every other minute, she thanked heavens that he resembled Percy so little.

When she finished, an awkward silence reigned. Audrey coughed. "I don't feel like talking. Do you?"

"Ready to take a vow of silence! Let's see what's on the ol' tube, eh?" He pointed to the remote, which was easily within his reach, but didn't pick it up. Audrey, wondering how she had always missed the clues, picked it up and turned on the television.

One channel buzzed to life, and Fred made a clever, inane comment about it. Audrey changed the channel, again Fred commented. Lather, rinse, repeat, until Fred found a channel he liked.

An hour passed without Audrey saying anything. During a commercial break, Fred said, "I came at a bad time, didn't I?"

"What?"

"I'm doing a monologue here. I'm not used to it. And without Georgie, this is a one-man show. What's wrong?"

Audrey could almost hear herself say "I French-kissed your estranged brother last night and I know you're trying to hide too much from me," but out loud she said, "It's been a long day. You're upset, too, right?"

He cracked a grin, but eyed her warily. "How did you know?"

"You've left George. Gotta be big, to break up the two of you." She stared right at him. "Are you going to tell me what's happened?"

An explosion of laughter came from the TV. Audrey seized the remote and stabbed the "mute" button with her thumb. In the silence, Fred said, carefully, "What do you think has happened?"

Audrey paused, feeling the tension sharpen between them. She took half a breath – "Are we doing a questions game?"

"A what?"

"A questions-only game, like 'Whose Line is it Anyway,' are we doing that?"

"What's 'Whose Line Is It Anyway'?"

"You know improvisational comedy, right?"

"Aren't we doing that right now?"

"Can you imagine a whole television show made of improv?"

"How long?"

"A half-hour, how does that sound?"

"Is that… normal for a television comedy show?"

"Ah, maybe, but you wouldn't know, would you, because wizards don't watch telly – do they?" She said the last part very fast.

"How – how did you –"

"Did you think I was born yesterday?"

"You're not supposed to know!"

"Why not? Will it keep me safer if I don't know about the war?"

"_Who told you_?"

"Maybe I read it in the Times?"

"STOP WITH THE QUESTIONS!" he roared, and Audrey shut up. Fred looked livid and frightened, and Audrey thought, '_If I tell him the whole truth, he may very well get mad at me and leave. So I have to lie… to protect him. Oh, irony_.'

"A friend showed up yesterday and came out of the closet – the magical one. And the closet of war – you know, the closet that you're in when you're hiding a terrible awful war from more than half of the population… that closet."

"Who?"

Audrey's brain scanned the database of Fred and George Weasley's friends, and took a stab in the dark. "Angelina Johnson."

Fred didn't look surprised by the name. "Is she okay?"

Audrey thanked her lucky stars. "Yes."

He leaned back into the couch. "Well. I'm… I'm speechless. This doesn't happen often."

"You can trust me." She said. "You don't have to change my memories, or anything like that."

"I wouldn't, even if I could. I don't know the spell. And if Angelina trusts you, so do I."

Audrey let that sink in for a little while, wondering what he would have said if she had named Percy. Then she asked, "So, are you and George on the run, then?"

"Yeah. Separate itineraries for the both of us – bloody weird, I tell you. Just until things quiet down." His eyes flickered to the muted panoply of colors and smiles on the TV screen. "The shop's been ransacked."

"Your – joke shop?"

"Trashed and seized. Dangerous owners manufacturing dangerous goods."

"I'm so sorry."

He shrugged. "It was only our life's work. We'll get over it. Start anew. You know, it's good to clear out the inventory, get a little new perspective—"

"Shut up. You're not fooling me." Audrey pulled him into a hug. "I'd've liked to have visited it," she said when she pulled away.

His face broke into the truest smile she'd seen yet. "You'd have loved it."

In the silence, Audrey picked up the remote again, flipping through her cable channels. By a stunning coincidence, a rerun of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" was on, and she turned on the volume and relaxed into the couch, watching Fred to the same. It wasn't long before he was laughing uproariously, and praising the comic genius of "that bald little tosser," and "the tall one with the shoes."

But he kept glancing to the side – not to look at Audrey; but as if waiting for George to top that quip, transform it into something even funnier. Nothing doing.

A couple of hours later, when Fred finally admitted to being hungry, Audrey put the put on for spaghetti. Ordering out would have brought back the memory of Percy – and that sense of rush, of time slipping away, and every moment growing more precious for that. Audrey was astounded at how normal she could act in the midst of this, when inside she felt like tearing and screaming and crawling somewhere safe.

When she plopped the drained noodles onto her nicest plate, dribbled sauce on top, and served it to Fred with a smile, he said, "Thanks! Didn't you make any for yourself?"

"No," She answered at once, then added, "I'm not hungry."

Fred eyed her doubtfully, but dug into his plate.

"I guess you'll only stay here the one night?"

"Yep. Keep moving, we agreed on that."

"Do you have any food?"

"I have enough. Look, don't worry about me."

"What would you have told me to explain you just happening to need to spend a night at my place?"

"I'd've come up with something. I have loads of Muggle friends, loads of excuses."

"Loads of Muggle friends that you lie to."

Fred glared at her.

"Constantly."

"Don't start. You sure you're not hungry?"

"Positive. And why shouldn't I start?"

"I am really not in the mood for a socio-political deconstruction of Muggle-Wizard relations. God, just by saying that I sound like that git Percy." Audrey felt a sudden desire to take the plate of spaghetti and break it over Fred's head. "Besides," he finished, "I sucked at History of Magic."

Audrey arranged her hands carefully. "Can I expect George in the next week?"

"No. We have totally different plans, him and me. We split our friends' lists down the middle."

"Well, I'm glad you trust me."

"Of course, Audrey. You're a trooper. I'm… now don't take this the wrong way, but I'm a bit surprised Angelina spilled all to you. She must've been really shaken up."

Audrey nodded slowly. "That's putting it lightly."

ooo

Audrey was worried about Fred wanting to stay up all night and kick up his heels, but, as he explained to her, "I'm a jokester, but I'm also a businessman. George and I keep strict hours – and nothing about _that _has changed."

"I seem to remember a few parties that only ended at dawn…" Audrey gave him a sidelong glare.

"That's weekends," Fred pointed out.

She made up a bed on the couch for him, but didn't believe she'd get much sleep in her own room. So she stayed up most of the night, instead, trying to read. At around midnight she remembered that she hadn't eaten any dinner, so she guiltily crept back into her kitchen, ate a protein bar, and tried to go back to sleep. She dozed fitfully until five forty-five a.m., when she gave up and went to the kitchen to make breakfast. To her surprise, she met Fred there. "Oh!" he said, starting. "I was just trying to figure out the stove-contraption you got here. I didn't think you'd be up."

"Were you leaving?" she asked. He was fully dressed, except for his shoes (she saw lurid orange socks that had many a sad hole in them.)

"Well… I was thinking of it. Got to make an early start. But I was going to leave a note…"

She heaved a sigh, and gave her best smile under the circumstances. "Stay for a cuppa, at least. I'm having coffee."

"Coffee sounds terrific. And toast?"

"Yes, and toast."

They ate their breakfast in silence, except for an odd "pass the jam" from one to the other. When they were done, Fred pulled on a pair of boots that he'd left by the couch. "Dragon leather," he explained.

Audrey was stunned, and Fred was obliged to take the boots off so that she could touch them and get a feel for them. "Let me get this straight," she said. "Dragons – mystical, powerful, legendary, wondrous beasts – ever-loving _dragons_ exist, and you make boots out of them? Just as if they were cows?"

"It's not just boots, you know. George and I actually have jackets, and the blood makes for a terrific oven cleaner."

"_Fred!_"

"What? Look, they're a protected species and everything. And even if they weren't, they can certainly take care of themselves. The hide and blood is taken from beasts that have died of natural causes."

"Oh… good."

"Usually." She glared at him. "Look, let's not get into a debate on ethics now, all right? Dragons die, and we use their body parts. That's not exactly unique to what we humans do best. Destroy, destroy, destroy."

"Exterminate," Audrey said flatly.

"Yes, that too. Besides, dragon leather makes the best walking boots. I bet I'll be wearing these 'til the day I…" he paused. "You know what, I'm not going to finish that sentence."

"No tempting fate?" she asked.

"If we're worried about temptation, here," Fred looked ceilingward and considered, "I think that overnight Fate has changed from a sweet little nun in a black robe to a threepenny harlot."

Audrey snickered into her cup of coffee. "Don't forget, karma is a bitch as well. With some reluctance, Audrey handed him back his boots. He pulled them on and stood up. "_Accio backpack!_ Heads up!"

His backpack soared through the air, and Audrey ducked just in time to avoid being hit by it. "A little advance warning would be nice," she told him.

"What's the fun of that?" he asked, shrugging it over his shoulders. When done, he held out his arms.

"Audrey, you are a one-in-a-million. Thank you _so_ much for letting me stay here… and for keeping quiet."

"Of course." Audrey hugged him, as tightly as she could. "I'm gonna miss your jokes. Give George my regards."

"I will." He squeezed her tight, and let go. "Stay safe, Audrey."

"You too, Fred. I'll see you, I guess."

He stepped out into the hallway and raised a hand in farewell. She gave a small wave in reply, and watched him as he walked down the dark hallway. She turned on the light for him when the automatic one switched off. Then he was down the stairs and out of sight.

Audrey shut the door, locked it, and put away the dirty dishes. She went to her room, counting on her fingers, "Bill, Charlie, George, Ron, and Ginny. If any of _them_ show up, I'm going to bloody well be prepared." She stared longingly at her bed for a minute – it seemed to be calling her back to it – and then sighed.

She got dressed, had another cup of coffee, and hustled as well as she could to the Underground station, and to work, where she could only pray to stay awake, or at least, fall asleep unobtrusively.

ooo

Seventy-two hours later, Fred Weasley unlocked the door of the flat he shared with his twin. He opened the door and listened. Silence. He called, "Hello? Anyone here?"

"Is it –" George came into sight at the end of the foyer. Fred eyed him suspiciously.

"Coconuts and mangos are dandy, I know," he said.

And George finished, "But liquor will serve you wherever you go!"

Such embraces.

When Fred finally let go of his brother, he turned right around to place an extra defense spell on the door, while George hurried into the kitchen to prepare something to eat. Fred followed him, dropping his backpack onto the couch. "So, how were your adventures?"

"Perfectly adventurous, I hope to never have any more like them." George said. "Sit, man. Sit. How about you?"

"No real troubles. A spot of bother outside of Stratford, but other than that – oh, wait until you hear this."

"Wait one sec." George opened up their liquor cabinet – small, but lovingly tended – and pulled out two bottles of Butterbeer Extra.

"Are those the last?" Fred asked.

"Second-to-last. We gotta have something for Christmas, don't we?" he passed one bottle to his brother.

They clinked them. "Cheers," they said in unison. They drank deeply, their hearts spilling over with joy at being together again.

George gave Fred's hand a quick squeeze. "So! You were saying?"

"You know Audrey was supposed to be my second contact. Anyway, so I leave Carabas' place, I get to Audrey's, and she's not there, but she shows up after a minute. She's all pimped out – nice dress, makeup, the works."

"_Audrey_?"

"Yeah. She looks nice! And I tell her so. But she just stares. And _stares_. You'd think the Bloody Baron had met her coming out of the showers."

George shuddered, obligingly. "Did something happen?"

"Well…" Fred took a sip, to make the delicious butterscotch soda last, "She lets me in, and she turns on the TV. We watch 'Whose Line is It Anyway' –"

"I've heard of that show. Heard good things."

"It's _really_ good. We should check it out if we ever get a TV. Anyway, she… she knew that I was a wizard."

"_What_?"

"And she knew about the war."

"How did she know? Who told her?"

"She said that the day shit got real, Angelina Johnson showed up, and stayed with her for a night. Just like that. And Angelina told her everything. That sounds like she was really shook up. You met with Angelina, didn't you? Did she lose someone?"

George had gone completely still. He stared at Fred.

"I met Angelina, yeah. I had to catch up with her. She wasn't at her place, at first. When we got there—"

Fred wagged his eyebrows.

"—Oh, shut up!"

"I didn't say anything!"

"When we _got_ there, okay, there may have been some eyebrow-raising antics –" he cleared his throat, looking sheepish, which was extremely rare for him, "but what she told me was that she'd spent the first two and a half days holed up in a basement at her uncle's, with her mum and dad. They're both Muggle-born, you know –"

"_And_ black."

"_And_ black. Risks all around. But she couldn't have done that… _and_ spent the night at Audrey's." Fred was quiet. George went on, anxious, "Do you think someone was impersonating Angelina? Who? What would they want? What if they did something to Audrey?"

"Wait," Fred held up a hand. "If there was some baddie who was, say, taking Polyjuice to look like Angelina, why would they go to Audrey's? and why would they leave her alive?"

George considered. "… It could be some kind of slow-acting curse, some wasting-away curse to infect Muggles, or…"

"If it was that sort of thing, it could have been implemented months ago. And with the war gone the way it has…" Fred took another swig of Butterbeer Extra, "There's no reason for them _not_ to kill a Muggle like Audrey. Not to make something the newspapers will report about. No… I think… I think Audrey was lying. Whoever came to see her after shit got real, she's lying to protect them."

George shook his head. "Protect them? From _us_? Who?"

"I don't know."

"I don't, either. Let's put it aside for now. Remember it to ask the next time we see Audrey."

"Christmas, maybe."

"Aye. Christmas."

They clinked glasses again. "To your health," said one.

"And wealth," said the other.

"And happiness," they said in one voice, and drank.


	8. The Sunglasses

After a final burst of heat, summer died out and yielded to autumn. Audrey waited for news from Percy – waited, and waited – she would have welcomed any red-headed runaway bearing the name of Weasley – but word never came. And no more Weasleys arrived at her doorstep.

Audrey forced herself to work day by day, forced herself to eat scrupulously organized meals whose calorie count she could recite on a dime, forced herself to sleep and to visit and to meet with friends and to do the little things that reminded her that she was alive. So what if the numbers of disappearing women, just in her demographic, only seemed to rise as the months went on? So what if her inner world was all ruined and wracked with fear for Percy, and what was going to happen to them all, and a thirst for a world she'd gotten a meager glimpse of? Life was going on. And she had to deal as well as she could.

So she dealt by keeping her eyes open for news from the other world – news that wasn't waiting for her to find it, that wasn't meant for her.

And she kept finding it, too. That was the strange part.

For starters, it was amazing what you could find when you gave the newspapers a second reading. It wasn't pleasant – murders, kidnappings, thefts, assault, all unexplained and mysterious and never properly solved – but it was something to know. The ones that were the most intriguing – names like Cauldron and Bonebright, and Weatherwax, didn't that just sound like a witchy name? – she made a point to follow over the weeks, to see if anything happened.

Furthermore, when she walked around London, she explored with a new eye. She looked for the places that wizards might have built or frequent – but she could never be sure if it was magic or normal English eccentricity. Once she found herself following a black cat for six blocks just because she assumed the cat knew something she didn't. Then the cat slipped into the yard of an exceptionally bourgeois house, framed with pink geraniums and a grinning gnome version of Noah Chomsky. Sheepish, Audrey slipped back home.

After that, she turned her attention to people who might keep magic under their hats. She fancied she could recognize the type – the fashion that was outdated at least ten years, the hesitation when faced with automatic opening doors. Most of all, the sadness and anxiety in their faces.

So Audrey found that, when you put your mind to it, it wasn't all too hard to find magic.

And, when you least expected it, it wasn't hard for magic to find _you_.

A few days before Halloween, the PA system called out "Miss Trotwood, would Miss Trotwood please come to the G6 Conference room," in a flat, colorless voice. Audrey saved the projects she was working on, stood up, and maneuvered her way out of her cubicle and out of the small maze of cubicles that was her workplace. She stretched her legs and wondered what the boss could want with her in G6.

When she opened the door, she saw that it was empty, except for a tall, thin man she'd never seen before leaning against the table.

'_Wizard_,' she thought as soon as she saw him.

"Could you close the door, please?" he asked, nodding to it.

She did, her heart pounding. She turned to look at him. He looked like a spell had washed out his color, with very pale blonde hair and silver eyes under a grey bowler hat. His suit was dark grey, old fashioned, and simply cut, except for the stars embroidered on his tie. Out of the corner of her eye, it seemed like they moved…

'_Wizard fop_,' she thought, delighted and terrified at once.

"Hello," she said, hands gripping one another tightly. "How may I help you?"

"Are you Audrey?" he asked, his silver eyes focused on hers with a peculiar intensity.

"Yes, I am."

"What's your favorite kind of tea?"

"Uh? Silver Needle?"

He relaxed. "Do you know Percy Weasley?"

"I do!" she exclaimed, excitement running through her veins. "Do you know him? Is he okay?"

He smiled. "He's fine. He says to say—"

'_He says to say that you're to come with me, come away to someplace where Percy will meet you and take you away from all of this, I'M GOIN' TO NARNIA_', Audrey thought, her brain hurrying ahead of what the man had to say.

He interrupted himself, "—But how rude, I haven't introduced myself." He took off his hat and gave a little bow. "My name is Hector."

"Hello, Hector," Audrey said, a bit vaguely as a part of her was trying to remember if she had shaved her legs last night and if not, would Percy think she was gross when she saw him again?

"Percy asked me to look for you, and to give you these—" he held out a small wrapped package. "—personally." She took it and fingered the colored paper wonderingly. "I wouldn't open it here," he warned.

"Oh, I wouldn't dream of it. This is special," she said. Looking up at Hector she asked, "What else did he say?"

"He said to say he's worried about you, and he wants to know if you're okay."

She bowed her head again, afraid she might show her heart on her face.

"Tell him I'm doing fine, and I… I'm looking out for him, and I miss him. How is the war g—"

"_Ssh_." He glanced to the windows. "That, Miss Audrey, would be _really_ unwise. But I'll pass on your message."

"Wait…" Audrey paused. "Are you an owl?"

"Am I _what_?" he asked.

"Percy said he'd send me an owl. But he hasn't sent one. Why hasn't he sent one?"

"Well, I guess he's been very busy –"

"In what? I thought infrastructure was destroyed!"

"It hasn't been, in fact, organization is tighter than it's ever been, and I'd be surprised if his mail wasn't being watched—"

"But he said it was destroyed. The Ministry."

"He was wrong – he wasn't the last."

"But he _promised_."

Hector looked very nervous, and Audrey was sorry; this wasn't his personal battle, she was dragging him into this unnecessarily. But she had to go on: "He promised he'd send word with an owl, then months pass and I get nothing? Just this?" She waved the handheld package. "Couldn't he write me a ten-page letter and send _that_ with you?"

"I assure you, Miss, when we say 'send an owl,' we mean a _literal_ owl," Hector said, pulling his jacket around him warily. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm… glad, I guess, that he thought to send me this. Whatever it is. Tell him I want a letter. Otherwise, I'm fine."

"I'll do my best. And for what it's worth, that –" he nodded to the package – "is a bit of my finest work to date."

"What do you do for a living?" she asked him. "With… with the stuff? The M-stuff?"

He looked at her curiously. "Why do you want to know?"

She shook her head slowly, her eyes widening. "It's a whole world, and it's not for me. I just want to know what I can."

He smiled sadly. "Well, can't blame you for that. I make things, mostly – yes, magical items. People like Percy pay me to craft specialty goods – but most of the time, they keep them for themselves."

He stepped back and adjusted his hat brim twitchily. "Now, remember, Miss: you never saw me, this meeting never happened, and that package in your hands doesn't exist."

"What package?"

He tipped his bowler hat to her in response, bowed, and then opened the door to her. She stepped through with a "Thanks, milord," and watched him walk swiftly out the door.

Out of curiosity, or devilment, or both, she leaned over to ask the receptionist, "Who was that?"

"Who?" the receptionist looked baffled.

Audrey was satisfied.

Audrey was never sure how she managed to sit through the rest of the day, after that little encounter. She kept nervously leaning over to look in her purse and see if the package was still there. It was, nestled beside her glasses case, and nearly the exact same shape and size. She kept her bag close and safe on the Underground (closer and safer than usual) until she reached home safely and locked the door behind her.

Finally, she peeled away the colored paper (yellow-gold with small berries on it, was this Christmas wrapping paper?) and she wasn't too surprised when she opened it up and found – glasses. Sunglasses, to be specific. To be extra specific, they were wire-frame spectacles with colorless tinted glass, and the exact size and shape of the glasses that John Lennon used to wear. So they were extremely cool – just thirty or more years out of date.

Somehow, it made perfect sense for Percy.

She peered at her apartment through them; they didn't appear to have any kind of prescription in the glass (just as well; her own glasses barely changed what she looked at and were only for long hours on the computer).

There was a note inside the wrapping paper as well. Audrey realized with surprise that she'd never actually seen Percy's handwriting, so skipped to the bottom to make sure that it was his name down there. It was. In fact, it said "_All my love, Percy_," and _that_ gave Audrey what her grandmother would have probably called a fit of the vapors, and she had to bounce around her living room for a minute before collapsing in a chair and composing herself enough to read the rest of the letter.

The first two words were "_My Brick_," but they had been crossed out and replaced with "_My Sometime Hostess_," in overly neat writing, and Audrey laughed.

"_I'm sorry for being silent. My post is watched and my every move is guarded. The bearer of this is barely an acquaintance of mine, but I know enough to know I can trust him. I also asked him to make something for you. He makes his living by crafting, selling, and repairing magic wands._"

"WANDS!" Audrey yelled. "He didn't say _that_!" She read on.

"_My wand is made of fir, with a dragon heartstring core – both of them harvested ethically and sustainably, I'm _sure_ – and steady, but not brittle. That's what the man who sold it to me said – he's the uncle of the man who's delivering this to you. He" –_ there was a small scribbled note in the margins next to the pronoun –"_(the deliverer, I'm so sorry this isn't clear but I'm writing in a hurry, forgive me) does miscellaneous bits of craft to help out the good side, because Those In Charge have revoked his license to sell wands. _

_Which brings me at last to what this gift is: I asked him to make you sunglasses that should be perfectly inconspicuous to Muggles_ –" Dream on, Percy –"_but, when worn, will allow you to see things that are normally hidden away from Muggles by glamor magic. DON'T GO LOOKING FOR THEM. Don't enter magically hidden places. I hope that this can keep you safe, but if you stray into the path of Those in Charge then you're walking into danger. Consider them an early Christmas present, and something to make up for the silence on my end. Please stay safe, and know _–" here there was a blot of ink, as if his pen – quill? – had hovered long over the paper in a search for the right words – "_how important you are to me_.

_All my love_, _Percy_"

ooo

The days grew darker, sooner, as the Northern Hemisphere turned its back on the sun as if they had quarreled; the weather became stormier and cloudier in one of the coldest autumns that London had ever seen. It was, all in all, not the kind of weather in which one wears sunglasses.

So as the autumn deepened, the sight of a young woman marching through Leicester Square with sunglasses straight out of the late nineteen-seventies, looking around at everything with consuming interest and attention, grew steadily stranger and stranger. However, most of the people she passed by didn't pay attention; they had troubles of their own to worry about, rather than a specimen frittering away her vision.

This woman made a peculiar tourist, though. After she rubbernecked perfectly ordinary buildings, standing for ten minutes at a time with her head tilted to one side, she would shake herself, then walk away very quickly, not looking back. She had the look of a young woman in a strange city, one who has been told to walk fast and not gawp, lest she fall prey to ill intentions. No one would have guessed that this lady had lived in London for the last five years, and considered it her home long before she moved there.

One rainy day in late November, she came across, and stared in wonder at, the _Society of Astronomy, Astrology, Stellaloquy_, and she couldn't begin to guess what the third one meant. As she had just put together that "loquy" might be like "ventriloquy," which meant speaking from your stomach (she subscribed to an etymology newsletter), so maybe Stellaloquy meant speaking to the stars, and just as she felt a thrill down her spine at the very thought of it, she saw a face through the window.

It was a very brief glimpse, not enough to even see if the person looking through was a man or a woman, beyond being middle-aged seeming, with white hair. They vanished, before Audrey had time to lift one hand in a cheery wave – but she waved anyway.

The next instant, the blinds had sunk over the windows, blocking the window's contents from view entirely.

Audrey's hand slowly sank, as she tried to figure out what she had just seen. She looked down at herself – red trenchcoat that was the best Oxfam had to offer, black converse shoes that were falling apart and letting in the damp from the sidewalk, frizzy hair held back by a headband.

_What a degenerative being she is_.

She took off the sunglasses and stowed them in her pocket. When she looked up again, the office whose front windows had been full of astrolabes, star charts, and globes of the moon, was gone. In its place was an alley full of garbage cans and wind.

_They don't want you to see it. This is all that they want for you_.

She turned away and walked down the street the way she had come, pulling her trenchcoat closer about her. The world was a great deal lighter without her spectacles, and she clenched her jaw against the thought of it, that now she was really seeing reality, that her reality was meant to be dingy and hopeless and dim.

As she took a right turn, heading vaguely closer to the Thames, she glimpsed the Millennium Eye curving high above the horizon. She stopped and stared at it, as the light from the sky dimmed and the wheel's own light began to come on. She sighed. Then she turned around, facing the Society, and jabbed two fingers in its general direction.

'_That'll show you – we can do amazing things without magic, thankyouverymuch_.'

When she returned to her flat, there was noise. Her roommate, Jennifer, had some friends over to watch the rugby match. Audrey had half-forgotten that she even _had_ a roommate, some days. The volume was up on the telly, and the volume of conversation was even louder.

"Audrey! We're about to order Indian. You want something?"

"No." Audrey went into her room and closed the door. She heard one of Jennifer's friends ask "who spat in her oatmeal this morning?"

Disgustingly, the comment reminded of her oatmeal, which was food, which she had denied herself today. She hadn't had her cup of tea… she couldn't stand to have an after-work cuppa now that there was a Percy-sized hole across the table from her… and she had skipped lunch in favor of wandering around and trying to find another magical building that didn't want her there. Her head was spinning. She poked her head out the door.

"I'm sorry, Jen. I've had a bad day."

"No problem, sweetie! We all have rough times." Jennifer, bless her, had a big smile and a list of orders in one hand. "You change your mind?"

"Yeah. I'll have a curry, if that's available. Chicken, and… spicy."

"Oooh, you're trading up, my girl."

"I could use the sensation," Audrey said. She slunk behind her door and closed it. She exhaled out into the chill of her room. Empty, drained, spiritless… though some of that might change when she ate something. She took the sunglasses out of her pocket and laid them on her dresser. They looked perfectly normal there, like they belonged.

She sat down heavily on the bed, her energy gone. Her eyes roamed, taking in the Muggle surroundings, the banality of her quiet existence, her books…

Audrey sat up. A memory had struck her like a thunderbolt, of a crowded and dusty bookstore where she had taken Percy – the last place she had gone out with Percy – and the owner, he had _known_.

"What was the name of it? Come on, Audrey, you know, you know this, think, think, think…" She ran her hands through her curls, eyes squeezed shut, trying to summon up the details of a day she had tried to forget.

"Sebastian… Sebastian and Viola… Mellows, Mellows… it was in Marylebone, or was it Southwark? It was… it was, I can see the street… it was by Hyde Park, yes, Hyde Park, because I walked there, I walked there and reached the northern gate, if I just go to Hyde Park I'll find it and –"

"_Audrey!_"

"WHAT?" she yelled back.

Jennifer opened the door and looked at her. "You want bread with your curry?"

"No, rice is fine. _Orsino_!"

"What?" Jennifer asked.

"Orsino's! That's the name of the bookstore I need to find. I need to go there."

"Um, good for you? Don't you have enough books?"

"This is different, Jen."

"If you say so." Jen closed the door, looking a bit annoyed, but Audrey didn't care. She leapt up, landed at her computer, and began to search for the place. She found it, eventually, and wrote down its address. She stuffed that into her pocket.

Tomorrow, she would go. Not a day later.


	9. Nevermore

Disclaimer: Still don't own Harry Potter. And this chapter comes heavily laden with literary references from here, there, and everywhere. I don't own any of them, either.

* * *

><p>Okay, something came up at work and Audrey ended up delaying her visit to Orsino's until the next Saturday. But that was better, anyway. She got up early (for the weekend), dressed warm, ate oatmeal and had tea, and then set out on foot to find Orsino's. Her sunglasses she kept in her purse, but ready to hand should she need them.<p>

The weather was very cold, with a fine drizzle coming down that threatened to turn into heavier rain at the slightest incentive. She found Orsino's after a bit of bewilderment – that is to say, getting lost and wandering in the streets, squinting up at the street names and walking down them warily.

She recognized the yellow sign of Orsino's at last, and hurried towards it, pushing her way inside just as the drizzle began to turn into proper rain. But when Audrey entered the shop, she stopped.

The shelves were dusty and disheveled. Various books lay on the floor, and more were piled up in boxes, haphazardly. The posters had disappeared from the walls, leaving bare wood in its place. There were no other customers visible. Audrey stepped over a stack of mysteries carefully. "Hello?" she called.

"Can't you read the sign?" called Mr. Mellows' voice from the back. "We're closed!"

"Huh? I didn't see!" Audrey looked, and now she saw. She turned back, "Are you going out of business?" She winced: '_Of course he's going out of business, every sweet and lovely little bookshop in London is going out of business, wow, way to show what a smarty you are, Audrey…_'

_Thump-thump-thump_, the footsteps approaching made Audrey consider darting and running for the hills, but then Mr. Mellows himself appeared in the doorway. He looked a mess: his tie loose, his sleeves unevenly rolled up, his trousers covered in dust. His face was flushed red and his hair was uncombed.

"We're not open for customers," he said, pointing. "Get out."

"Do you remember me, Mr. Mellows?" Audrey asked hurriedly. "You said I could have a free book, but I turned it down. It was a copy of _Neuromancer_. It was… it was on a day there were two wizards in the shop, and one of them was looking for your sister," she said in a desperate rush.

He stared. "You're… you're the one, you came in with the redhead. The one who performed the Memory Charm."

"You remember!"

"Of course I do. _I _didn't have a Memory Charm on me. What did you come here for?"

"I wanted to talk to you. About, about magic. I can't find anywhere else." '_Well I can but I've been warned away from them on pain of some unspecified but grisly fate_,' she thought.

"You want to talk about magic?" His mouth twisted down, and he turned away. "You're better off forgetting." He bent over, pulled a stack of Everyman Library volumes of poetry off the shelf, and deposited them in a box on the floor.

"Sir? Are you closing the shop?"

"No, the books sang to me in the night that they fancy a change of scenery on the floor. Yes, we're closing, and no, I have no interest in talking to anyone about magic."

"But I'm not magic, I'm a—"

"Yes, a Muggle, I remember, that man from the Ministry made it quite clear."

"You knew he was from the Ministry?"

"He only announced it the minute he entered, now get out of my shop!" He pointed to the door. Then he bent down, reaching for a stray copy of _And Then There Were None_, before he straightened up with a yelp, clutching at his back. While he cussed, Audrey saw her chance. She put down her purse and rushed past him, saying, "I'll give you a hand with that, shall I?"

She picked up the book, found the box labeled "Mysteries," and laid the Christie carefully on top. The mysteries piled by the door followed, in a neat stack, with the sole Christie piled in among the Father Brown stories returned to her kind. Then she turned to Mr. Mellows. "Anything else you need me to clear up?"

He stared at her. Then said, "You really want to talk about magic, don't you."

"Yep."

"Well, you'll work for it, Miss—"

"Trotwood, sir."

"Miss Trotwood. Well. Do you see the poetry books?"

"Yes?"

"That whole shelf needs to be emptied and I'll get the next box for you to fill up. Hope you've got a good chiropractor."

Mr. Mellows wasn't a bad boss; his directions to Audrey were very clear and precise, and he even got her fish and chips from the shop on the corner at lunch time. It was four o'clock when all of the shelves were empty. He leaned against the door to the employee-only section of the shop, and sighed. Then, he said the words to signal that her time was up:

"Fancy a cuppa?"

Audrey gladly followed him into the back, lugging her purse with her. There was a small kitchenette and lounge, with a sink, table and chairs, electric teakettle, and yet more books. Mr. Mellows opened up a drawer with an assortment of mugs, and pulled out two.

"No cream," he said flatly. "It's gone bad. No biscuits either. We still have some sugar, though."

"Thank you." Audrey tapped her feet, and tapped her hands on her legs, in the sudden silence. She cautiously said, "I've always thought running a bookshop would be heaven on earth."

"I haven't had the time to read in years," Mr. Mellows said, filling up the kettle. "You still with that ginger? He treating you well?"

"I haven't seen him, actually. Not since summer."

"When the Ministry fell, you mean?"

Audrey tried to hide her surprise "Yes, e-exactly, not since then. You know?"

"Of course I know. Is he your boyfriend?"

Audrey fell silent, flustered, and finally answered, "No-o-o-o…"

"Have you heard anything from him?"

"No… but I'm sure he's doing good things."

"Does he work for the Ministry?"

"Yes. But he knows how corrupt and horrible it is, so –"

"So he went on the lam and is living in sin with you and rebelling against the government?"

"… no?"

The kettle boiled over; Mr. Mellows shut it off and poured the tea into the mugs. They were both Shakespearean Insults mug, one in navy blue, the other in brown. He said "If you'll take my advice, miss, your best bet is probably to run far away from him and forget what even he looked like."

"What?"

"Do you have the slightest idea what the Ministry is doing? What that magical world has become?"

Audrey shook her head. He set the timer for six minutes.

"I don't' even know what the Ministry was like to start with," she offered.

"Neither did I." He brought the mugs to the table and sat down opposite her, heavily. "Except what my sister told me."

"Your sister… the witch?"

"My sister. The witch."

Audrey waited, then asked, "Older or younger?"

"Twins, actually. She was a half hour older. Never let me forget it."

"Does she work in the Ministry?"

"Couldn't qualify. She never took the exams – they're sort of the magical equivalent of A-levels. She dropped out of school after our Dad died."

"Is that… normal?"

"It was her choice. She was of age in the wizarding world – seventeen – and she wouldn't leave me behind. 'We're all we've got the world, Bastian boy,' she said to me. 'And I'm not leaving.'"

"Bastian?" Audrey asked, smiling. "Like the boy in _The Neverending Story_?"

Mr. Mellows nodded. "I loved that book best. Sometimes I would call Viola 'Momo' – you know Momo?"

Audrey shook her head.

"That's another book by Michael Ende, the author of _Neverending Story_, and Momo is a little girl who – no, nevermind, I'm losing track of where I was going. No, Viola never worked in the Ministry."

"Because she lacked the qualifications?"

"Yes. She sold potions on the side, and we ran this bookshop together." He gestured to it. "Not much, but we loved it. And we had each other."

He fell silent, for a long time. The timer went off, and he drank his tea without taking the bag out. Audrey let her teabag drip out before depositing it on a napkin. She drank slowly, waiting for him to say something else. But he didn't.

Audrey ruminated on what he'd said – in addition to putting away a book called "_Momo_" for future reference, because that sounded like fun. She tentatively asked, "Have you got any… well, magical books here?"

That turned out to have been the wrong thing to say.

"_No_." He put his cup down with a loud _clink_. "Haven't you noticed the distinct lack of Gramarye and Necromicons lying around? Listen, she's _gone_, she cleared the magical books out months ago, when You-Know-Who came back and it was all announced and official. They began to investigate Muggle-born wizards, then. Test out how pure their blood was, how strong their magic. When was the first time they'd shown magic? What age? What if they weren't really witches or wizards at all? Oh, you think this all started right when the Ministry fell?"

"I—I had no opinion on it either way—"

"Think again. This has been brewing for years. This is the kind of garbage that the Ministry was built on, and the only difference between then and now is it's exposed. No more lies. No more hypocrisy. No more of their goddamned _noblesse oblige_."

He stopped to take a sip of tea. Then he started again. It seemed like this had been boiling up in him for years. "And Viola was an easy target. No other magic in her family, not even her own twin. Never finished her schooling past five years, choosing instead to return to that Muggle world that they despise. Something _had_ to be wrong with her, if she'd prefer us to them. You know what they're putting out? The new party line?"

"… what?"

"They're putting out that Muggle-born witches and wizards steal their magic from pure-bloods. That they steal their wands, and steal their magic away. That's impossible, first of all – Viola told me enough magical theory to know that. But you see what a great political tool that is? How wonderful a target it makes? Because it can't be proven, but it's bloody hard to disprove, when the only people who _could _disprove it, are Muggles, and a Muggle's word in the courts of law is a bloody good joke."

"I didn't know that," Audrey whispered. "I didn't know that at all."

"Yeah. Well, if this ginger of yours has anything to do with the Ministry, likely his hands are as dirty as anyone else's – pushing the lies, signing the papers, publishing the edicts, even if he didn't come up with them himself."

"But he _wouldn't_—"

"Do you know? Do you _know_?"

Audrey fell silent. It had been bad enough thinking that she knew a tantalizing little of the wizarding world, beyond her comprehension. Now Mr. Mellows was showing a chasm between her and Percy, of comparable size.

"But… that wizard, the scary one, wasn't able to find your sister."

"Right. She was missing." Mr. Mellows' loquaciousness had abruptly ended.

"Well… if she's missing, maybe she's okay. Maybe she just can't get a message to you that she's okay."

"I know what happened to her."

Mr. Mellows' voice was so flat, so empty, that the last thing that Audrey wanted was to find out what happened to Viola Mellows.

"Does…" she ventured to ask, gathering her courage, "Does anyone else know?"

Sebastian shook his head. "No one Muggle."

Audrey hesitated, then put her hand on Sebastian's. "Do you want to tell me?" Somehow, it felt like the distance she breached was much greater than that of a rickety little pine table.

He caught his breath, then said, "They caught up with her. They tried her. They found her guilt—guilty of magical theft. What am I going to do without her?"

"They killed her?" Audrey's eyes widened.

"That? That would have been barbaric. They're too _civilized_ to kill people, their government. Do you know… what a Dementor is?"

Audrey shook her head.

"They're a magical creature. Being, really, because they can be made to understand laws. No one knows where they came from. Okay, maybe someone knows. But I don't. They're nasty, horrible, evil things. They look like the Grim Reaper, but they bring a horrible sick feeling, like you've never been happy, and you'll never be happy again. They drain warmth and life from the air. Oh, and only wizards can see them. To you and me, they're invisible."

"Oh. I actually have— nevermind." She realized that if Sebastian stopped talking now, he might not start again. "Go on."

"Now these Dementors can't kill you. Not directly. Too much time with one, and you'll probably kill yourself. That's not hyperbole, they make you want to die. But if the Ministry wants to speed up the process, they can order a very special procedure. Reserved for their most dangerous criminals, or," he added, his bitterness sharp as a knife, "any presumptuous thief of magic, who threatens their precious _order_."

Audrey didn't ask what it was.

"It's called the Dementor's Kiss."

She blinked. "That sounds strange…"

"The Dementor has a mouth. At least, that's what I've heard. And when the Dementor is authorized to Kiss a person – or if it jolly well feels like it and there's no legal authority to stop it – the Dementor attaches the mouth to a human's mouth, and sucks out their soul."

Audrey stared. "I'm sorry… _what_—"

"Sucks. Out. Their. Soul. They're left alive. But barely. They breathe, they swallow, they shit, but they'll never speak, they'll never move of their own will. They'll never heal. They die within days, unless someone keeps them alive."

"But—what happens to their soul?"

"It's gone."

"Like—destroyed?" Audrey shivered.

"No one knows. The soul can't be traced. It can't be called back. I mean, they have ways – it's imprecise, and the magical folk hardly know more about the afterlife than we do – but they know it's _there_. But souls that have been sucked in by a Dementor, they're off the map, out of sight, goodnight Vienna, maybe just, consumed." His voice grew very low. "No one has any idea."

He just sat there, while his tea cooled by his hand, staring at the floor, at nothing. Finally, he said, slowly, as if every word cost him a great effort, "They found Viola guilty. A Dementor Kissed her. Her soul is gone. Gone. _Gone_."

"How could they?" she breathed.

"That's the world you want to enter! That's the world you're so in love with! That's a nightmare! You want magic? You want fantasy and wonder and delight? There you go!" His voice broke on the last word, and he began to sob.

Audrey felt, as a natural British impulse, embarrassed for him. She became very interested in the wall, and tried not to hear him, to let him bear out his sorrow in peace. But finally she couldn't take it anymore, and compassion won out. She got up and knelt next to him, putting her hand on his shoulder. "I'm so sorry, Mr. Mellows. I'm so sorry."

He rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands, muttering incomprehensibly. He shrugged her off and took another deep gulp of tea. "She was all I had in the world," he said, gulping and sighing. "And they destroyed her. I don't even know where her body is. They just sent me –" he waved towards the window – "an owl. As her next of kin, I had the right to know. I give up," he choked out, "It's all I can do to think of leaving this place. Please, Miss Trotwood – leave me alone."

But instead, Audrey rummaged through her purse, and took out the sunglasses Percy had sent her. She shoved them on her nose, and looked around the room – then glanced into the hallway. She saw no Dementors – nothing that wasn't visible already through her normal eyes.

"What are you looking for?" She jumped when she heard Mr. Mellows' voice. He was staring at her, with his back slumped and his head propped up on his hand.

"Um – these are sunglasses that Percy – my ginger – sent to me. They're enchanted. They can see things that magic has left behind – stuff that Muggles aren't supposed to see."

"Throw them out." He turned back to his tea. "You're better off without them."

She had an idea, and looked slowly around the room, and through the hallway. "I see… I think I can see magic that your sister left behind."

"What?"

"Yeah, it's got kind of a violet tinge to it… er, purple, yeah … and, let's see, on the kettle, on the window, on the matching mugs… wow. The place is crawling with—I mean, swarming with – I mean, there's a lot of magic here. It's like she really loved it, or—"

"I can tell you're faking," he said flatly.

Audrey took the glasses from her nose, and stood awkwardly in the middle of the floor.

Mr. Mellows looked back at her. "But thanks anyway."

Audrey put her glasses back into her purse, and was about to say it was time for her to go, when Mr. Mellows said, "May as well keep those. Make it harder 'em to sneak up on you. Hey, humor me. Look up at the pallid bust of Pallas."

"Huh?" Audrey looked where he pointed. Atop the filing cabinet was a small bust of a woman with a stern expression and a helmet of war. Audrey looked through the glasses, and reluctantly said, "No. What am I looking for?"

He gave a weak half-smile. "Hallowe'en prank for our party. She glamored up a raven that would appear on the bust of Pallas, but you could only see it out of the corner of your eye, or when you weren't expecting it. That was when the bust was in the shop, overlooking the horror genres. She took the spell down, at New Year's. D'ye know any Poe?"

Audrey shook her head. "Um, is it a kind of ghost?"

"It's a kind of poet."

"Oh! You mean Edgar Allan Poe. Yeah, sure I know him. Real lugubrious, moody guy. Yeah?"

"Actually, he was a surprisingly methodical sort, for an opium eater – had a whole formula for how his stories went. His most famous was 'The Raven.'"

"Nevermore?" Audrey offered.

"Precisely. Nevermore. Do you know what question 'Nevermore' answers, though?"

She shook her head. "It's been years, sir."

Mellows leaned back, contemplating the ceiling and stretching his legs out before him. "'Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if within the distant Aidenn' – that's heaven – 'he shall clasp a radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.'"

"So it's—"

"'Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.'"

"So, basically, it's—"

"Quoth the Raven… 'Nevermore.'"

Audrey slowly sat down opposite him. "So, he's asking to know if his girlfriend – Lenore – who's dead – will be there in the afterlife, if he'll see her when he's dead. And the Raven tells him, no."

"Nevermore."

"Nevermore." He let the word fall into an ominous and deep silence, before he broke it by saying, "I've just had that stuck in my head all day. I won't be having any more tea, you?"

"No, thanks." The heartbroken brother appeared to have disappeared, taken his place again behind the competent and professional – if shabby – bookseller. "So, what are you going to do now?" she asked.

"I'm closing up the shop. I've got a friend who runs a bookshop in Copenhagen, and I'm going to move in with him for a while. I need to get away from here."

"What about this place? Are you selling it?"

"Renting, renting. Or it could burn down in the night, I don't really care." He dumped the teacups in the sink.

"Oh." Audrey looked around, and pressed her fingers into the grain of the table. "I… well, sir, I wouldn't mind running the shop. It's very charming, and I've always loved books…"

Mr. Mellows gave her a hard stare, his hands folded over his chest. "You love books enough to re-stock all of the books that you've just carefully put away, redecorate the place with posters and signs, keep hours five days a week, quitting whatever job I presume you have, and keep the records of sales and order new books and host events and entice new customers and, if the need is urgent, throw books away because you can't sell them? Not to mention, pay the rent."

"Oh. Um. Well…"

"Nevermind. I appreciate the sentiment. You seem like you'd do your best, but I have to make an income from this place somehow, an' I've already got a few tenants lined up."

"D'ye think you'll ever come back?" she asked. "And open Orsino's again?"

He stared at a filthy spot on the floor. "Who knows?" he said.

She looked down, too. Then, tapping her heel very lightly against the floor, she asked, "What if I looked after the place? Sort of. I mean, stopped in from time to time, just to make sure the tenants were looking after it proper. And then I wrote you a letter – or email, have you got email yet? – telling you that the shop was all right? Would that be… okay?"

He looked at her, and she looked at him. She saw how red and swollen his eyes were, how pale he looked, like he hadn't slept in days. She wondered if he and his sister Viola looked alike, and if she had looked like this in the days when she was on the run, afraid for her life and her soul. She felt, deep inside, that Mr. Mellows needed to leave London behind. She'd never been to Copenhagen, but it was a city on the sea, right? And the sea was a healer, full of salt and tides.

"Yeah," he said at last, "That'd be all right."

When Audrey got up to leave, Mr. Mellows bade her wait. He stood on his tiptoes, and fetched the bust from the top of the filing cabinet.

"Here," he said, holding her out, "take Pallas Athena."

"What? No… I couldn't," Audrey said, looking a bit alarmed at the sight of the glowering stone woman.

"No, go on. She won't pack well, and anyway, she's fond of England, ol' Pallas. The Danish air wouldn't agree with her."

"Gosh… thanks." She took the bust carefully. She hefted it in her hands, then looked up at the bookseller. "I really am sorry, Mr. Mellows. If you need anything in the least, just let me know."

He nodded. "D'ye need a bag?"

"Um, yeah, that'd be good…"

"And I tell you what. Help yourself to the books. I mean it," he said, when Audrey began to protest. "They won't do me any good, and I saw how you eyed them. Just do me a favor, and memorize 'The Raven.' Oh, and read up on who Pallas Athena _is_. I think you'll be fond of her."

Audrey had stammered and grinned and blurted out many thanks, Mr. Mellows, thank you ever so much. She left the store laden with two big paper shopping bags, in a brief reprieve between rains. She would deal with the problem of where to put her new books, her new bust, and Mr. Mellows' Copenhagen address, later.

But when she left, even though her good-bye was as warm and compassionate as she could manage, she couldn't help but dwell on Mr. Mellows, now waiting alone in his empty bookstore, a shadow among shelves.

There was a very cold, clear, sharp smell on the air when she got back to her flat. It gave her a moment of vertigo, where she jumped in terror and thought that she was smelling a Dementor, come to devour her soul. But she blocked it out with her apartment walls, and when she woke up in the morning, she found that the ground was covered in snow.


	10. Christmas Ham

"Audrey, you haven't touched your ham."

"I'm sorry, Marion. I'm just not that hungry today."

"Not hungry today? It's _Christmas!_" Audrey's step-mother stared at her disbelievingly, and then, looking around the table, repeated, "Christmas," in case the others hadn't gotten the message via the fake holly berries, the tree in the living room, or the carols playing on the radio.

"I hear being single at the holidays can really take it out of you," said Fordham, and he grinned at Audrey. "I should know!" Fordham was Audrey's father's best mate – a lifelong bachelor.

"I just think it's, well, it's a shame," Marion went on, stabbing her ham with her fork. "I slave over this meal all day, and today, of all days, Audrey's appetite is somewhere else. Can't even summon up a will for Christmas? _Or_," Marion gave a little gasp, and turned theatrically to her stepdaughter. She said, in a stage whisper, "Audrey, this isn't your _disease_ coming back, is it?"

"For heaven's sake, Mum, leave her alone." That was Elena, Audrey's step-sister (older by four years), glaring at her mother from down the table. Audrey mouthed a _thank you_ to her.

Olivia, Audrey's other step-sister (older by seven years) tossed back her blonde hair and took her mother's part. "But Audrey really is not acting like herself. Quiet as a nun, or am I the only one that's noticed?"

"Well, things were different last Christmas," Audrey said, trying to keep her voice even so that her father wouldn't be distracted from his intent discussion of stocks with Olivia's husband. "Or haven't you noticed all of the – the stuff that's been going on? Disappearances, deaths, grisly and unsolved murders…"

"Well, you're a real cheery bird, aren't you?" Olivia said. "What happened to Christmas spirit?"

"Have you noticed at _all_? Have _any _of you noticed?" Audrey demanded.

"Yes, I've read a few articles," Elena said, her voice very calm and even. "They say it's a crime wave, with some lingering effects of the government cutbacks… Audrey, you don't have to worry about it, not right now. It's the holidays – be merry."

"I worry about it all the time."

"All of the time?" Olivia shook her head. "That can't be. What else do you think about?"

"I'm reading the works of Edgar Allan Poe," Audrey said. "Working through them. And I'm brushing up on my Greek myth, you know, the old gods. Like Pallas Athena," she added. No one's eyes lit up with recognition.

"Sounds like a laugh riot," Olivia said.

"This coming from a lady who cleans up a diaper all day and thinks it's her vocation," Audrey said, cutting into her ham at last.

"Audrey, how _rude_," Marion said.

Audrey fell silent, and stayed silent for the rest of the dinner. When the dinner guests dispersed, she offered to stay behind and clear the dishes with Elena. As Audrey laid the plates into the kitchen sink, she jumped when Elena spoke to her. "Hey. Are you all right?"

"Not particularly," Audrey said, picking at her green velvet dress.

"Anything I can do?" Elena asked, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Are you eating all right?"

"I'm eating fine. I'm – sure, I miss days here and there, but I'm fine. Really."

"I hope you know, if you need to talk, I'm here. Even after the holiday."

Audrey nodded, without conviction. Elena lived way to the north, near Liverpool, and what Audrey most wanted was a fellow warm body to sit near, watch telly, and laugh with on the weekends. Nothing fancier than that, really. And Elena couldn't realistically be that. But… "Thanks," she said. "Y'know, Elle—" she wiped her hands on the hand towel and handed it over, "I think I'm going to just go outside for a bit, take a walk. All right? You mind telling the others?"

"But Olivia's going to bring Ben out in a minute," Elena said. Benjamin Wallis was the Baby, and he was the prince and celebrity of the extended family.

Audrey shook her head. "Sorry, Benjy's going to have to wait," she said. "I need a minute to myself. Just…" she gestured to the window. "Some air."

"Ah. Well, by all means. We'll have tea all ready when you get back."

"Thanks, El." Audrey was already hurrying to the service porch as quick as was decent, pulling on her boots and her jacket.

In a minute she was outside, stalking down the walk, wriggling her gloves to fit her hands, and cursing the cute, but pitifully short cut of her velvet dress, and the accompanying inadequacy of her overcoat.

She would just do a turn or two around the block. Nothing unusual, nothing extremely anti-social. She buried her hands in her pockets.

There was only a little bit of snow on the ground – most of what had fallen in the last month was transient stuff, that fell by night and looked pretty for a few hours before melting in the daylight. The clouds lay heavy in the sky, but Audrey at least tried to tell herself that she was outside, she was in the country, getting some fresh air, peace, quiet—

Quiet that was routinely broken by the noise of carolers. They sounded drunk – worse, they sounded American.

Audrey turned around when she realized the noise was getting nearer. She headed back to her dad's house, angry at the rowdy carolers for ruining her solitude.

But then, the sound carried over the cold air very crisply, and she heard an aberration –

"_Love and joy come to you_ – _and to you _Protego_ too _–"

That word – it was a word Percy had used, that last day. She was sure of it.

She stopped, and turned around.

There were three carolers, two young men with woolen caps pulled low over their ears, and a tall black woman with a large scarf, that covered half of her face. As they sang, they waved around what looked like synthetic Christmas wreathes.

Audrey didn't have her purse or her sunglasses with her, but she didn't need to, to recognize them. To recognize what they were doing.

One of the young men – his freckles clear even in the winter light – turned and spotted her, and stopped dead in his tracks.

Audrey had a split second to wonder if he was going to put a spell on her; then she realized, she didn't want to wait for him. So she stepped towards them, not saying anything, not calling out, just looking straight at them as they all turned and saw her, that was Fred Weasley, and that was George, and the girl – Angelina Johnson. Something tugged at Audrey's memory – a warning bell to do with Angelina – but –

Before she could process what the warning was, one of the young men – it was Fred – strode up to her and clapped his hands on her shoulders. "_Audrey Trotwood_, as I live and breathe! Happy Christmas! Happy Christmas!"

"Happy Christmas," Audrey repeated vaguely, smiling at George, and meeting Angelina's eyes, with a kind of apprehensive smile – alarm bells – but wasn't this nice, it was Christmas, so Audrey began,

"This is such a lovely surprise, how would you like to take tea with my family? We're just around the corner, if you'd like –"

"That'd be grand, Audrey, and thanks," Angelina said, "But we've got a schedule to keep to, haven't we, boys?"

"What are you doing?" Audrey asked. "Caroling? Looking for wassail? Those are wands—" she pointed to the wreaths in George's hand – "aren't they? Disguised?"

George looked at her with an appraising and surprised glance. "Awful sharp of you, Audrey."

"We're spreading a little Christmas cheer," Fred answered.

"How do you know about wands?" Angelina repeated. "Audrey, do you _know_—"

"Of course she knows," Fred said to Angelina. "Didn't you tell her?"

Silence descended, except for the alarm bells ringing fit to break in Audrey's head. She swiftly cursed several things, including herself and her own stupidity, and Fred, for having a memory sharp as a razor.

Desperation took over: maybe she could still salvage this. "Yeah, Angelina, don't you remember? After the day that – um – Those-That-Are-In-Charge, after they got… in charge… you came to see me, and you, just, you just let it spill out – magic, and, and, pure-blood stuff, and, don't you remember?"

Angelina's confused look gave way to a pained smile. She shook her head. "I'm real sorry, Audrey, but I'm not going to cover for you. I never told her about our world," She said to George and Fred. "So how do you know?" She asked, turning to Audrey.

"Uh. I. Er."

"Audrey, you need to tell us in five minutes or less, because we really _have_ got a schedule to keep—"

"I know! I heard you! Jesus Christ, I'm a Muggle, not an idiot!"

"Keep your voice down," George admonished her.

"You're one to talk! What are you even doing here?"

"What are _you_ even doing here?" Fred asked.

"My dad's house is right around the corner. I needed a break, I took a walk. Now, your turn." No one answered. "Those," Audrey pointed, "are wands. What are you using them for? Or… are you really drunk?"

"We're not drunk," Fred and George said in unison.

"One question at a time, and we're on a schedule," Angelina Johnson said, pulling her scarf down from her face. Audrey understood in a minute that she was the leader of the expedition. "How do you know about magic?"

Audrey cleared her throat. "Ahem, I'll tell you, but… you've got to promise you won't get mad."

"Why would we get mad?" George asked.

"_Promise_."

"Alright, alright, I promise," Fred held up his hands. George did the same.

"I'm sorry I lied to you," Audrey said to him.

"I forgive you, now get on with it."

"I'm sorry about using your name, Angelina."

"It's all right," she said, but her voice was tense.

Audrey took a deep breath, a quick prayer to Pallas Athena, and said in a rush, "It was Percy. Your brother. He told me."

There was a breath of silence, then –

"_Percy_?" Fred repeated, taking a step back.

"He came to see _you_?" George asked.

"How do you know him?" Angelina asked.

"I thought we told you, you shouldn't have anything to do with him!" Fred reproached her. "Weren't you listening?"

"Well, I _have_ something to do with him!" Audrey yelled, throwing her arms wide. "What are you going to do about it?"

Fred and George began to talk at once, and Audrey caught some words that distinctly lacked goodwill and peace, before Angelina put one hand on each of their shoulders, silencing them, and then gave Audrey a look. It was not accusatory, but exasperated, sort of '_You could have named literally anyone else. But it had to be Percy, didn't it_?'

Before anyone else could speak, Audrey said, very fast, "Okay-now-I-told-my-bit, you-promised-not-to-get-mad, now _why are you here?_"

"Slow down," Angelina said, "say that again?"

"Why are you here? In this neighborhood?"

"We've got like seven more neighborhoods to cover before dark," Angelina said, looking at her wristwatch. "We're casting protective spells. Aren't we, boys?"

"Yes," George said, sullenly. Fred was still staring at Audrey.

"Protection spells? From… from the ones in charge?" Audrey swallowed. "That's what Percy called them…"

"I'm surprised he didn't call them Supreme Mugwumps, that disgusting –"

"Do I have the right idea?" Audrey almost yelled, cutting George off in the middle of a rant.

"_Yes_," Angelina said. "Now, do we even want a proper conversation," she said to George, "or do we just want to yell at each other?"

"This isn't your call, Angelina –"

"Am I the leader here, or aren't I?"

"Look, if you want to come by later, and, I don't know, _talk_," Audrey said, "my dad's house is Number 56, Eyamshire Road. I'll be there until tomorrow, and then, I'll be at my old flat. London. Same place. I haven't left it. Nothing's changed at all, with me." She held out her arms, then dropped them to her side. "Happy Christmas."

Then, with her heart sinking and her eyes stinging her, she turned and walked away. She didn't look back, not even when she heard someone respond, "Happy Christmas."

When she returned home – no, not really home, to her father's place – the whole family was taking tea, and Olivia gladly handed Ben off to Audrey, so that she could have a cuppa. Ben was already fidgety and fussy, and he hadn't been in Audrey's arms for a moment before he started bawling at the top of his lungs.

"Oh, sure, take the part against me, why don't you?" She asked, before handing him off to his hovering, anxious father.

Later that night, in the silence and pitch-blackness of the house, there was a small light and tinkling noise in the living room. It was "The Ballad of the Wind Fish," and Audrey squinted at the glowing screen as she played 'The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening.'

With her tip of her tongue at her teeth, she joined in on the Ballad, humming and hissing and trying to keep it down. It was better than trying to sleep. Maybe later she'd sneak into the kitchen and eat some of that leftover ham.

A movement in the window caught her eye. She looked up, her eyes struggling to adjust to the darkness, and realized there was something in the window, one of the neighbor's garden gnomes. It was bobbing up and down in the air before the window, apparently of its own volition, framed by the streetlight.

Audrey got up and stepped for a closer look, the blanket tight around her shoulders. The gnome's bobbing was frankly a bit creepy.

On the sidewalk, a ways beyond, stood Angelina Johnson, holding out her "wreath" and looking at Audrey's window. Fred and George were flanking her, each watching another part of the street.

In under a minute Audrey had her boots on over her socks, and her father's overcoat – it was big and warm, and he didn't need it right now – over her pyjama's. Door was locked, she had keys in her pocket. Ready. But despite this, she shivered when the cold bit into her. It had started snowing again. She reached Angelina just as the taller woman returned the gnome to the empty circle of snow that was his home.

"So what's happening now?" Audrey asked, too cold and too wary for small talk.

"We've just been eaten up with curiosity," Fred began, turning from Angelina's right hand…

"Ever since your little confession earlier, we've been bamboozled—" George began. Angelina rolled her eyes.

"_Boys_. No time. How're you doing, Audrey?"

"Freezing like a witch's teat in an iron –" Audrey stopped short, and then colored crimson. "Oh. My. God. You're, you're a witch, I'm – I _knew_ that, I'm so sorry—"

"Audrey, I could do with a really hot drink right about now. We want you to come with us to – to _our_ place. It's secret."

Audrey nodded. "I won't tell a soul, I promise."

"We know you won't," Fred replied. He smiled at her, a bit warily.

"Are you game to come with?" Angelina asked.

A fervent nod. "Yes! Absolutely!"

"Okay… Boys, into position."

"What are you doing?" Audrey asked. George took her right arm and Fred took her left, and they locked arms with Angelina at the same time.

"We're going to teleport," Angelina explained. "You're going to come with us. Audrey – this is going to be really uncomfortable."

"I can handle it." Audrey braced herself, and tried to look fierce.

"Wait," George interrupted. "Anyone going to miss you at home?"

"No," Audrey replied. "Not for another few hours. The door's locked, I have a key, let's go let's go let's g—"

000

"—_ohmygodwhy?_"

Fred and George let go of her arms and Audrey fell to the floor, a great deal paler and shaking herself all over, anything to relieve that terrible _pressed-in_ feeling she'd had.

"What _was_ that?" she asked.

"Teleportation," Angelina answered, squatting down to look Audrey in the eye. "Or Apparition. You alright?"

"That wasn't teleporting, that was a brief sojourn on a two-dimensional planet." Audrey struggled to sit up. Angelina helped her.

They were in a basement. A hearty fireplace was set in one wall, and George was moving with alarming speed, clearing papers, gloves, hats, and other debris off of what showed itself – after much excavation – to be a couch. Fred was opening up shelves and pulling out bottles.

"Let me guess," Fred said to her, "You could use a drink."

"Could I ever!" Audrey answered. Without Angelina's help – without too much of Angelina's help, anyway – she made it to the couch and sank down, already feeling a bit over-starched and over-heated in her father's coat, but also certain that she was not going to take it off.

Angelina had no such compunctions. She drew off the scarf and pulled off her gloves, shaking out her long braids and letting out a relieved sigh. "I'll have whatever she's having," she said.

"Liquor before beer," Fred recounted, as he poured out a measure of some golden liquid into two tumblers and then presented them, with dancing-class manners, to the two women.

George had moved on from clearing out the couch to removing debris from two – no, three armchairs, which had seen better days, and slouched backwards as if they were dreaming of said better days at this very moment. "What was that oh so charming phrase you were using, earlier, Audrey?"

"That I _do_ have something to do with Percy?" Audrey asked just before drinking. The phrase had been echoing in her cranium all day.

"No, no, no, that thing about teats? Cold teats?"

A sputtering, and a faint shower of whiskey, erupted from Angelina, who had just taken a drink. She pressed her sleeve to her mouth, her eyes crinkled with suppressed laughter. Everyone in the room looked at her worriedly until she swallowed and uncovered her mouth, laughing so hard that Audrey took her glass away.

"A witch's teat in an iron bra! I haven't heard that in _years_!"

"Are you mad? I'm, it just slipped out, I'm so sorry to demean you like that—"

"Demean me? Woman, I have heard insults that made my skin crawl; but coldness measured in the—the frostbite of magical nipples—" another snort and burst of laughter –"I couldn't care less. Honestly – _witch's teat_."

Audrey, wondering at the transformation, tried to meet Fred and George's eyes. The efficient squadron leader had vanished, and Audrey wasn't sure to make of who she left behind.

But Fred and George were not going to help. "What's that about bras? Your bra?" Fred asked, leaning forward in the armchair and grinning.

"An _iron _bra. Sounds positively medieval." George added.

Angelina drew herself up proudly once again. "The contents of my bra, or the temperature therein, is none of your blessed business, Frederico Giovanni Wesliatti."

Audrey gaped. "That's never your real name – is it?"

"Bless you, no," Angelina said, as the twins burst out laughing again. "It's a joke we have – but of course you don't know. No, the boys aren't laughing at you – just, god, Audrey, we haven't had a newcomer in our ranks for such a long time, all of our little jokes have grown old and ossified."

"A newcomer?" Audrey asked, excited. "Does that mean you're going to let me stay and – and contribute to the cause?"

"Not in that sense… not yet. But we're getting ahead of ourselves." Angelina took her glass back and lifted it. "Cheers, cheers."

"Cheers," Audrey clinked hers against it, and then George's, and a last craning stretch to clink Fred's.

She took a drink, and sputtered and coughed. "What _is_ this?" she demanded.

"Ogden's Old Firewhiskey," George and Fred said in unison.

"A classic of our schooldays."

"All kinds of fond memories."

"Tastes awful," Angelina said, contemplating the bottom of her glass, "but when you're a student, it's cheap and you don't know any better."

Audrey frowned at the liquor. Then she closed her eyes and tossed it back, wincing terribly. "Alright. Let me tell you about Percy," she said, opening her eyes, to find she had the complete attention of everyone else in the room. She took a deep breath, and began.

She had been thinking over what she might say for the better part of the afternoon and evening, so it was, in her mind, well-organized, from the first meeting, where he had been trying to reach out to Fred and George, to the last encounter on the Day that Shit Got Real, as George helpfully called it. She tastefully excised any romance between them, partly, to be honest, because she thought the twins might just hit the ceiling. When done, she took another long drink, finishing off her second glass of Firewhiskey. Stuff wasn't so bad, once you got used to it.

She almost spat out her drink, when Fred said, "I don't believe it."

"Don't believe what?" she demanded.

"I don't believe that Percy opened up to you – like that – you admit you barely knew him. And, Audrey, you're a Muggle! Percy would hand you over to Runcorn himself, if it meant a promotion."

"Well, you're wrong. You're wrong about your brother, sorry to say."

"Oh, you have a few dozen cups of tea with him and you're his confessor, but I _lived_ with the git for almost twenty years, and I'm wrong about him?" Fred reached out and poured himself another glass of whiskey.

"Yes!" Audrey said. "What was even the rift between you? He never said. He just, it sounded like he never fit in with you. And there's something political, isn't there?"

"That's the understatement of the century," George said. "I'll handle this one, Freddie. Audrey, what's your grasp on the political situation?"

"There are people who want to kill me, and other Muggles, just because we're Muggles. And they're the main power in the wizarding world now."

"Correct."

"They have a big surveillance system, control of the bureaucracy, and they have this idea that Muggles can steal magic and become wizards. They think it's a bad idea."

"Correct."

"But that's impossible."

"Yes… Percy told you about all of this?"

"And that there's a kind of resistance going, that Percy wants to be a member of the resistance, but that he's in such a high place in the bureaucracy it'll be too hard for him to wriggle out easily. He's watched all of the time."

"Now how do you know about that?"

"Reading between the lines, you should give it a try."

"I find that very hard to believe, alright, Audrey? Very. Hard. To Believe."

"Do tell, George."

"Pardon me," Angelina said, getting up. To Audrey she said, "Nothing against you, or you," this to the twins, "but I lived this saga, as a spectator. I've heard this story so often I'm—I'm going to go upstairs and check on things."

She disappeared out a door, and there was a sound like she was ascending a staircase. "What is this place?" Audrey asked.

"It's better that you don't know," Fred replied.

"Back to our brother," George said, "Ever since his first day at Hogwarts, he's had it on his mind to clamber to the top of the social hierarchy."

"Thank your lucky stars you weren't around the day he got the letter naming him a Prefect," Fred said. "Merlin's rheumy eyeballs, you'd think he'd been named King. Prancing and preening, lording it over Ginny, who was all of nine, until even Mum got sick of it—"

"Mum encouraged him, you know," George added. "Told him to shoot for the stars, reach as high as he could go—"

"I was under the impression that's what mothers were for," Audrey said.

"Is that so, Audrey? Well, how about this, how about Percy took Mum's advice to heart, and then cut her off like so much baggage when it was bad for his career? Hm? He didn't mention that, did he?"

Audrey swore loudly, spilling what little whiskey was in her glass with a forceful gesture that took the twins by surprise. "Enough of the hints! You had—" more swearing –"ages to live with him, just talk to me like I'm an adult and not some kind of audience, alright?"

She relished the stunned looks on their faces. "And," she added, "I don't want the David Copperfield nonsense, the entire rivalry from the day you were born. I get it, brothers don't get along, _I get it_, now tell me what the rift was!"

"Who's David Copperfield?" Fred asked.

"He's one of those Muggle 'magicians,'" George answered at once. "He's always levitating, walking on water, and he looks like he just rolled out of bed."

"No, not _that_ David Copperfield! That's a book! God, just – just what was the rift?"

"Percy got a promotion at the Ministry. This, after the Ministry has taken the party line that, oh, You-Know-Who isn't back, everything's fine, never mind the corpses piling up or the countrysides being ripped to shreds – Percy is still licking their boots, and when they promote him, he comes home to give us the news, and Dad points out to him that Fudge only moved Percy up to his right hand in order to get a spy in on us."

"On you?" Audrey asked. "Why are you so important?"

"Mum and Dad are very close with Dumbledore."

"Dumbledore? You mean… the school Headmaster?"

"Dumbledore, only the most powerful, wisest, and most gobsmackingly good man the world ever knew, _that_ Dumbledore."

"And… you thought that in order to spy on Dumbledore, that's the only reason Percy was promoted?"

"Yes."

"Your _dad_ said that?"

"_Yes_, Audrey, and frankly we all agree with him, except Mum, because—"

"Well, you're all lunatics. D'ye have any idea how hard Percy works? How absolutely driven and dedicated he is? What's wrong with your dad, that he doesn't realize that's a damned slap in the face to his son? His own son? Is he some kind of psychopath? What's _wrong _with you?"

"Don't talk about Dad like that!" Fred got to his feet.

"Talk about psychopaths?" George asked. "You can try living for a year under the command of a woman so foul, so sadistic, so _evil_ that she forces children to write lines _in their own blood_ – I am not kidding, Audrey, their own blood – a tyrant who took over our school and turned it into a hellhole, gave more than one Gryffindor kid nightmares, and did everything in her power to make us powerless, weak, helpless little _insects_." George remained seated, but his voice grew steadily louder and colder, with a look on his face that Audrey had never seen before, nor did she care to ever see it again.

Audrey, however, wasn't on the same page. "That – that's awful, but who is that? What does she have to do with any of this?"

"Dolores Umbridge," Fred crossed his arms, looking into the fire.

"Pray you never meet her." George added.

"You'll spot her a mile away, pink and frilly and little kitten scarves, rings on her fingers, bells on her toes –"

"And she will sic a Dementor on you with a smile," George finished. "Do you know what a Dem—"

"Yes," Audrey interrupted. "I know what a Dementor is. I still don't know what Dolores Humbert-"

"Umbridge," the twins said in unison.

"_Umbridge_ has to do with Percy!"

"Percy works for her," George said, leaning back in his armchair. "He works _willingly _for that monster, and has defended her _in writing_ as 'actually very sweet, when you get to know her.'"

"That is a level of delusion commonly associated with the more powerful love potions," Fred observed. He grinned to see Audrey shudder.

George went on, "He threw his lot in with people who were trying to keep wizards and witches in the dark, uninformed and open to every kind of attack. This, at a time when Mum and Dad were – and still are—putting their lives on the line, for no thanks and no glory, all to keep innocent people safe."

"Maybe you should have explained that to him," Audrey gripped her fists in her lap. "Maybe you should have respected his hard work, and his vision—"

"Percy worked hard—"

"For the most corrupt organization you can imagine."

"And his _passion_—"

"Passion? You don't _really_ think they promoted him for his astounding reports on the thickness of cauldron bottoms?"

"Maybe you should have seen him as a _person!_" Audrey screamed. "You're so wrong, both of you, you never even bothered to think, think about how he felt, relate to him as your brother, you just saw him as a joke, you disgust me!"

Before the twins could say another word, Audrey turned on her heel and ran. She dashed up the staircase, and flung open the door, only to collide into Angelina.

"Where you listening at the door?" Audrey demanded, when she got herself to her feet. She was still wearing the overcoat, and by now was sweaty and overheated and miserable.

"Yes, I wanted to know when it would be safe to come back in. I'm sorry, I shouldn't've." Angelina closed the door to the basement quite firmly. They were standing in a dim corridor, with umbrella stand and a door to the outside.

"No, you shouldn't've. I'm done with you. I want to go home."

"Audrey," Angelina put her hands on Audrey's shoulders, and the shorter woman convulsed, trying to jerk away, "Audrey, I've heard that story about a million times, and no one has ever, _ever_ contradicted them on it - let alone yell at them for it."

"They need a good yelling at," Audrey said, looking at her feet.

"I agree completely." Surprised, Audrey looked up at her. Angelina's dark eyes were completely serious and level. "I—I can't talk to them about that, not if I want to stay their friend – and I do – and most people that we know, they agree wholeheartedly. Of course, we're all on the same side…"

"I'm on your side, I am," Audrey defended, "but to hear them talk about Percy like that, you'd think he wasn't even their _brother_—" A sob cut her off. She curled up her shoulders, burying her face behind one hand.

"Audrey?"

She couldn't answer.

"Are you—in love with Percy?"

Audrey shook her head.

"No?"

"I can't be," she replied. "I, I, I don't even _know_ him. Sure, I—I kissed him once or twice, and, sure, he thinks I'm safe and I, I miss him all of the time – but how can I miss him? I did all of the talking. I only found out about the magic – the last day I saw him. That was months ago. How can I love someone – who's just – lied to me?" Audrey barely managed to choke out the last phrase before her voice failed her and broke into pieces, with her breath and her vision. Tears ran down her cheeks.

Angelina gently led her out from before the basement doorway, and then hugged Audrey tight. "Go on, let it out. I don't blame you."

"I'm crazy, all I do is cry, and I'm useless to everyone—"

"Don't talk like that, Audrey. It's Christmas." Angelina rubbed her back. "It'll make anyone feel like they're going crazy," she added.

"What will?"

"Being in love with a Weasley."

Audrey pulled back. Angelina wore a half-sheepish, half-resigned smile. "I should know."


	11. Fighting Words

Chapter 11

Author's Note: I had a dim idea of a conclusion to the story, where one day in early June Audrey would be going about her business, worrying about Percy, but getting down to the business of living, when suddenly Percy would show up out of nowhere, tell her that the Battle of Hogwarts had been three days ago, and that the war was over. A surprising end to the war, just as it had started surprisingly. But I don't think that's going to happen.

Probably just as well.

Also, Monty Python is not mine.

000

"Which of the twins—" Audrey began, then stopped. That would be rude. It would be prying.

"That's the question everyone asks me," Angelina answered, with a rueful smile. She leaned against the wall of the corridor. "I was dating Fred for a bit in school. Of course that means I'm bound to marry him, right? _His_ parents married their high school sweetheart, and so did _my _parents –"

"No," Audrey said. "That's rubbish. My parents got married straight out of school, and divorced ten years later. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked. That's just – inviting drama, that is. I'm sorry."

"I accept your apology. I shouldn't have been listening at the door." The taller woman checked her watch. "I think their tempers may have cooled down a bit by now. Ready to go down?"

"Um. Yeah." Audrey wiped the tears from her face, and tried to squish her private hope that, since she had retracted her question, Angelina would answer it. "Let's go."

Audrey went down the stairs first, at Angelina's insistence. When she entered the basement room again, she didn't look at either of the twins, but focused on taking off her father's overcoat and laying it on the couch. She gave thanks for her choice of tasteful navy blue pyjamas, instead of the rubber-ducky pattered ones that she wore at home. And for her decision to wear a bra.

"Audrey," said George, "We were talking it over, and we think that we all got a little too… heated."

"No more whiskey for us," Fred concurred, as he closed up the liquor cabinet.

"We want you to acknowledge that Percy has not been the – the _easiest _person to live with. And that even if he has had a crisis of conscience –"

"—or if some of our family _may_ have been inconsiderate of his wishes," Fred added, grimacing.

"—he has a dragon's hoard worth of nastiness to account for," George finished. "That's not going to be wiped clean with a _Scourgify_."

"On the other hand," Fred chimed in, "the fact that he told you this, and that he put down spells for your protection, well… we frankly have no clue what to make of it. But maybe it means he's changed. Or, changing."

"Or had changed in the past," George said drily, "always leaving open the possibility that he's changed _back_ to being a git."

"George!" Angelina said. "That's not funny."

"I would like to apologize," Audrey said, wiping a stray tear in an authoritarian way, "for yelling. And swearing. You know him longer, I should… trust your experience. It's just a lot to handle, y'know? I'm sorry."

"It _is_ a lot to handle," Angelina said to the fireplace.

"This is the problem," George said, half to Fred and half to Audrey, "with going to school all your life with the same people, with going to a tiny school that feeds into an even smaller society. You get so used to how your situation looks, you can't explain to anyone who hasn't grown up with it."

"Insular and insufferable," Fred replied. He grinned at Audrey. "That's why we wanted to make Muggle friends. Partly to shock our Mum, to be frank… but also because in the wizarding world, you don't have that many chances to _make_ new friends."

"Tell us, Audrey, does the old gang miss us? Are the parties the same at all?" George relaxed into his chair. He was making a conscious, slightly strained effort to lighten the tone. Audrey coughed.

"Could I get some water, please?"

"Oh, sure!" Fred – who seemed the appointed bartender – leapt up and disappeared around a partition. "Tap okay?" he called.

"'S fine," Audrey answered. To George she said, "Things have gotten quieter; to tell you the truth, I've kind of lost the zeal for get-togethers."

"Feeling down?" Angelina asked, glancing at Audrey.

"Yes."

"We feel pretty down sometimes ourselves, you know," Angelina stood up and shuffled off her jacket.

"Yes, but at least you're wizards – and a witch. You're out there actually changing things. Hell, you just _know_ things."

"Some stuff I'd rather not know," Angelina answered, sitting back down.

"Well, I'd rather know more. Look – isn't there something _I_ can do?"

"No," said Fred and George at the same time that Angelina said "Absolutely not."

"What? Nothing?" Audrey looked from one to the other. "There's got to be something! I work with computers – well, you don't know computers – but are you operating a whatchamacallit, an Underground Railroad? I can shelter people on the way."

"On the way to _where_?" Fred asked.

"France? I don't know, I have a flat in London, you could meet there, even just use it for meetings, I don't care, just make me involved!"

"We don't want to 'make you involved,' Audrey," Angelina said, "Not if we can help it. You shouldn't even _be _here right now. We're in this war to protect people like you, who can't protect themselves—"

"That's rubbish! Shouldn't your resistance or whatever you have got going on have at least a _few_ of the people you're trying to protect?"

"You can't protect yourself at all, that is the point we are trying to make!"

"But—"

"Do you have training as a sniper?" Angelina asked.

"Give me _something!_"

"Audrey, we can't put you in danger," Fred said, at the same time that George observed, "Actually there are a couple of Muggles in the Order—"

Angelina turned to him. "You're being a bloody great help," she said sharply. "This is not the way that this evening was supposed to go."

"How was it _ever_ supposed to go, Angelina?" George quipped back. "We take her in, interrogate her, and give her a good Memory Charm for the road?"

"Don't you _dare,_" Audrey shrieked, and she didn't mean for it to come out so loud but it was so terrifying, "don't you _dare_ cast a Memory Charm on me!"

They shushed her, and Audrey shushed. She clenched her jaw tight, covering her mouth with her hands. Finally she said, "You can trust me. I can contribute. Please, let me do _something_. I'll join your order, I want to join, I want to fight—"

There was a noise above. Audrey glanced up as Angelina said, "Must be Lee."

She headed upstairs. Audrey unclenched her jaw – she wouldn't cry again, and especially not in front of them.

When Angelina re-entered, walking behind her was a black man of medium height, with dreadlocks and two bags full of what smelled like Chinese takeout. "Happy Christmas, boys and girls!" he announced in a hushed voice as he arrived. "Here's some dim sum for _you_, and chow mein for _you_, and there's – hello, who's this?"

He stood back to survey Audrey, as she surveyed him. "I don't think we've met," she said gravely.

"Lee Jordan," he said. "It's rare we see new people here, nowadays."

"Audrey Trotwood," she replied. "Muggle."

"She's just passing through," Angelina said, as Lee took his seat on the third chair.

"Actually—"

All eyes turned to Fred. He looked straight into Audrey's eyes. "You remind me a lot of someone, someone whose importance to this whole – _thing_ cannot be overstated. Everyone wanted to protect him, but he wanted to fight. He was chomping at the bit for it. And even though everyone said he was too young, he told them just what you told us, 'I want to join, I want to fight.'"

"Are you talking about Harry?" Angelina asked.

"Of course I am. It was Dumbledore's idea to keep Harry as much in the dark as possible, and to try and leave him out of the action. That nearly drove Harry around the bend."

"It _did_ drive Sirius around the bend," George added.

"Amen." Fred nodded fervently. "Audrey's right – this is her war, too."

"How did she get involved?" Lee asked.

"She made herself involved," Angelina replied. "That's the short answer. Are you two in agreement about this?"

Fred and George looked at each other. "I wouldn't go that far," Fred said, "but it's something to consider."

"Dumbledore thought that sequestering people away was the best way to protect them—but Dumbledore's gone," George said. "And frankly, I never thought that was all that wise in the first place."

"Ooooh," Lee said, "them's fighting words." When everyone glared at him, he said, "Pardon me, I haven't eaten in hours upon hours, I'm a bit light-headed."

He passed out the food, and everyone dug in and ate. There was even enough for Audrey, and she made sure to thank Lee at least twice. There was nothing but silence for a few minutes as they chewed.

The first one to talk was Angelina. She swallowed a mouthful of dim sum and asked, "I'm going to regret asking this. Who are the other Muggles in the Order, George?"

Fred smiled to himself. George answered, "I only know the names of three, but I know there's more. Tonks' friend is really driven on including more Muggles. Anyway, there's two doctors out in the countryside, near Yorkshire. Tonks has gone to them to get patched up after a mission when St. Mungo's isn't an option. And there's a fisherman in Dover that helps people cross the Channel into France, if they need to get out without magic."

"That's something," Audrey said, without conviction. She stared at the dull fabric of the couch.

When no one else offered anything, Lee Jordan said, "I take it by your silence that you don't have a medical license… or a boat."

"I write programming. Code. I live between my apartment, which I share with a friend, and my cubicle, which is smaller than this room. I… I've never even taken a self defense class."

"You don't even live alone, do you?" Lee said.

"No… fine." Audrey sighed. "I give up. Just… please don't take my memory of this away."

"We won't," Angelina said, reaching over and taking Audrey's hand. "Thank you, Audrey, for… shit, not for giving up, but thank you for understanding."

Audrey nodded. She bent her head and resumed eating. The weight of their talk, of the evening, of the war, fell onto her. She felt too tired to continue arguing. Too tired to even think of fighting in this strange war.

Lee began to tell the twins and Angelina about what he had seen on his expedition, and gradually their talk turned to Christmas celebrations. Audrey found herself listening with growing interest, and smiling every time the Weasley twins started to talk about their family's Christmas traditions and mishaps. Percy felt very near as she heard those stories, and it almost made up for her giving up her right to participate in the war. Almost.

"Audrey?"

She started up. She had been leaning on Angelina's shoulder, and dozed off. Audrey started up, embarrassed, and apologized, but Angelina said, "I'm hardly surprised. It's three in the morning." Lee was already snoring, and the twins did not look much more awake than that. But Fred caught her eye.

"We had better get you home," He said. He stood up. "Ma'am, if I may?"

Audrey giggled, and took his hand, picking up her father's overcoat.

She rather rushed the goodbyes. No one was awake enough for heartfelt profusions, anyway. Again, she ascended the stairs, and again there was that terrible godawful pressure all round.

The immediate cold of the outdoors woke Audrey up, embracing her through the unbuttoned coat, its sleeves and its collar. They were standing outside of the little house on Eyamshire Street, just as they had been when they'd left.

"Well," Fred unhooked his arm from hers, "Happy Christmas, and a happy New Year, Audrey."

"Wait…"

"What." Fred's patience was limited. Could she blame him?

"Just… can you promise we'll meet again?"

"Can't do that, I'm afraid."

She sighed. "Let me know you're not dead, at least."

Fred, his face drawn and lined and older than Audrey had ever seen, gave her a wry glance, and then said in a croaky voice that would have made a senior Python proud, "I'm not dead yet."

Audrey began to giggle, stifling it behind her hands.

Fred turned away. "I'm gettin' better… Think I'll go fer a walk_…_" and began to walk up her front steps.

"'Ere," she said, "'e says 'e's not dead yet!"

"Ah feel happy! Ah feel… happy!"

"Sssh! Sshh!" She barely managed to smother her own laughter.

Fred smiled to see her so delighted. He doffed an imaginary hat, she curtsied. Without another word she turned away and headed towards the front steps. Fred remained where he was until Audrey entered her front door. She waved through the front windows at him. He waved back, then turned around, and vanished.

Audrey shuddered. Just like that. Just like magic. It was so simple, and now this bizarre but deeply welcome evening was over.

She hung up her dad's overcoat, just where she found it, and gratefully eased her feet out of the boots. She found her bed on the couch, and huddled up on it, craving warmth. Before long, she fell asleep again.


	12. Memory Charm

Chapter Twelve

When I started this chapter the fervor over Scottish independence was naught but a murmur, and I decided to set it in Edinburgh mostly because I've been in Edinburgh and it's a lovely city. The Harry Potter films and books are both set in the past, so there'll be no talk of Scottish independence, though that does not mean I am not a sympathizer.

Guns. _Duh_.

Audrey was tempted to smack her head against the glass of the train window, but she did not. She had been terrified as a child by the notion that every time she hit her head hard enough, she was destroying brain cells that would never grow back. Questionable science though it was, the notion had persisted.

So she tapped the frame of the window in frustration.

_Tap. Tap. Tap_.

Guns, of course. She should have suggested that on Christmas night. Muggles have guns, wizards don't. Would a gun defeat a wand in a fair fight? Audrey didn't know. The question had to have come up sooner or later… she reasoned that muskets and things had been around for centuries… but muskets barely counted as "guns," did they? Those were cumbersome, took forever to load, and had laughable aiming accuracy. The question was, had anyone tried ever since the Winchester was invented?

"_On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me, a Winchester nineteen-sixty-three…_" she sang quietly.

Gun versus wand. Not that she knew where to acquire a gun, or even how to hold a gun if she did acquire one, nor did she wish to run afoul of the law. But she should have at least brought it up.

"Guns, bombs, mounted artillery, body armor… different kinds of guns… why didn't I bring it up? How stupid am I?" she asked her reflection.

Out of the corner of her eye, something moved. She turned around and saw that her train neighbor had moved across the aisle and was avoiding eye contact with her.

Shit. She was talking to herself in public. Again.

_Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap_.

She was halfway to Edinburgh before sense occurred to her. By the sounds of it, the war against Those In Charge was more of a guerilla rebellion. Mentions of "Snatchers" had haunted the little Christmas dinner; new government edicts, each more stringent than the last; not even any safe space to set up a radio station. This was more _1984 _than _Lord of the Rings_.

And magic, magic provoked more questions than it answered. Guns, bombs, and such were extremely handy in Muggle guerilla conflicts, but when it came to magical warfare, was too much Audrey did not know about the _how_. Did combat magic use true names, summoning spirits, controlling the elements, or controlling thoughts? Or something else altogether? Did Snatchers blind or bind their victims? Could they control time? The possibilities were endless and terrifying.

For the first time, Audrey cursed the number of fantasy novels that she had read. They were giving her too many ideas.

Even getting back to the Resistance, they might not accept her offer. Guns were illegal in Muggle Britain; if they were fighting so hard against the magical government, they probably didn't want to be branded criminals of the mundane government.

Besides, she was forgetting her prime lessons from adolescence: the _X-Men _cartoon series. What did Magneto prove? All it took was for wizards to invent or discover _one_ magnetism spell, and there went your great secret weapon.

So she was back to square one.

_Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap._

So who would win in a fight – a Muggle with a gun (say a trained soldier, someone who knew what they were doing) or a wizard with a wand (and armed with a killing spell?)

God only knew.

Audrey stopped tapping her head against the window frame. The last thing she needed was for her mother to ask her why she had a bruise on her forehead.

And her mother…

Nope. Thinking about magical wars was more pleasant than thinking about her mother.

'_Audrey, how rude_.'

Audrey sighed. Again. Her mother had very kindly paid for Audrey's train fare to and from Edinburgh, and honestly Audrey and her mother had been getting along much better since they weren't forced to interact on a daily basis.

But there were old wounds there, old hurts. Percy and the Weasley twins might see 'divorce' as an abhorrent and unthinkable option, but Audrey's mother had introduced 'divorce' into her daughter's life at the tender age of eight. With the wisdom of a twentysomething, Audrey could understand that her parents weren't suited to each other, that they had grown apart out of what had been a truly loving relationship in their youth. And she knew that her mother loved her. But it had taken Audrey a long time to stop accusing her mother, in her heart, of throwing aside her family for the sake of some vague career in photography that had never materialized.

Well, that was the funny thing. Just in the past few months, the career _had_ materialized. Years of small jobs and small contacts had gathered momentum, and now there were write-ups about her in _The Guardian_ and _The Times_, pieces of hers in big name magazines, at fashion shows in Paris and Milan. And Audrey –

Better to just not think about Audrey's career.

Or her love life.

Or her consuming interest, namely a magical war in which she had no part.

'_For the love of god, Audrey, start listing out some proper conversational topics_.' Audrey rummaged for a notebook in her backpack. '_Mum, how do you like the works of Edgar Allan Poe_?'

The train pulled into the station, and Audrey was already standing at the door to disembark. She stepped onto the platform, lugging her roller suitcase behind her, and tugged her jacket shut – she hadn't reckoned how much colder Edinburgh would be.

She headed towards the station.

"Audrey! _Audrey!_" She looked up, and there was her mum, and despite all the drama and worry, her first reaction was to grin and hurry towards her.

"Mum! Hi!" They hugged and Audrey's mum immediately took her suitcase, despite Audrey's protests. She then steered her daughter towards the exit, in a gesture as friendly as it was irresistible.

Lucy Trotwood was of Audrey's height precisely, with a rounder and more Gallic sort of face, and she wore a smart black trenchcoat over smart black jeans. Her hair, trimmed to a smart black bob, was still irascibly curly.

"Have you had lunch yet?" She asked.

"I had breakfast –" by which Audrey meant, exactly one cookie and a cup of tea, consumed hours ago –" I could really go for something to eat."

"Excellent, I've had my eye on a cute little bistro all week…"

This was where Audrey's imagination would have trotted down a dark path, imagining all the ways that this conversation might go wrong. But she stalled that, and wondered instead where Percy was, right now, and what he might be doing.

"Merlin and Morgana, Weasley, are you still here?"

Percy looked up. Agatha Zabini, court scribe and undersecretary to the Financial Sector, was staring at him as if he had gone mad. What was unusual about this wasn't the "staring at him as if he had gone mad" part – she usually did that whenever he began to talk about new filing procedures and why they were important – but the fact that she was there at all.

He said, "Aren't you supposed to be on holiday?" It was supposed to be a witty and cutting remark, but sleep deprivation and an excessive length of time since his last cup of tea made him slur, so it sounded more like "Ahnchoo s'posed t'beyon oliday?"

"Aren't you?" she replied. She shifted her bag from one shoulder to another and frowned at him. "I got an urgent owl from the estate of the Dorrits of Dorsetshire – I needed to come in to get some forms and papers. You—" she glanced at the debris around him – "you look like you haven't even left for Christmas."

Percy coughed, and spoke with better enunciation. "I'm needed here," Percy said, feeling his ears go red. He tried to clear off some of the napkins and crumbs. The papers were in impeccable order, but he'd been neglecting the cleanliness – and there was nothing like being scrutinized by an attractive and difficult-to-please young lady like Miss Zabini to make him feel humiliated by it.

"Did you leave for Christmas?" she asked.

"Yes, I did, as a matter of fact. Went to a party at Minister Thicknesse's house – his wife is a lovely hostess, did you know?"

"That party was Christmas Eve," Agatha said. Nothing slipped past her. "Did you come back here on Christmas Day?"

"No," he said. He dropped his eyes. "I listened to the radio and got Indian food."

Agatha Zabini shook her head. "You need a girlfriend, Percy Weasley."

"You have no idea."

There was a silence. Percy started to turn red with even more embarrassment (and god, he needed sleep), while Agatha's eyes widened as she tried to process the sentence she had just heard.

"I shouldn't have presumed—" she started.

"Don't even bother," he said. He forestalled a once-in-a-lifetime event – a Zabini apologizing – by holding up his hand and shaking his head. "I've been exhausted. And yes, I know I need a girlfriend, I know what everyone says. Oh, what a shock, prudish Percy thinks about girls from time to time? Yes, he does." He stood up and took out his wand. "I'm just tidying up here, Zabini, no need for you to linger around."

"Ah… let me make it up to you, anyway. You want to get lunch? Just something to get you out of the office?"

"I like the office, I'm at home at the office, and anyway I brought lunch. I don't need your charity."

"It's not charity, it's – fine. Suit yourself, Weasley." She walked away without another word. While he applied _Scourgify_ and _Zephyrio _to his desk to blow away crumbs and debris, he could hear her shuffling through her desk papers, folding the appropriate parchments into her bag, and then walking past him again, her high heels clicking on the mahogany floor.

"Happy New Year, Weasley," she said.

"Happy New Year, Zabini."

When the door closed behind her, Percy sagged a bit, leaning hard on his left hand, on the desk. "You're a sad little man, aren't you," he said to himself. "Nowhere to even go for the holidays."

He glanced up again, to be sure that the door was shut. He took out a parchment that was covered quite heavily with stains of tea and teabags, and tapped it with his wand. "_Silver Needle Tea; Link's Awakening_."

The tea stains disappeared and were replaced by his own writing in blue-grey ink. It showed a timetable, with initials and symbols in place of names and locations, and hours written in Central Standard Time – six hours behind the British clock. (Time Zones – a Muggle innovation – he was particularly proud of using that).

According to this, there were still three hours left to go before he was to meet Tarek El-Amin – a Muggle-born wizard, and a Moroccan immigrant besides – for his "hearing." Percy would be the sole Ministry authority present; this interrogation of Muggle-borns and subsequent conviction had become so routine.

But tonight, he would change that. And Tarek El-Amin would be in for a surprise indeed…

But that was three hours away. Percy looked over the schedule with list of safe places to go one last time – for now – and then put it away, enchanting it with the words "_Hello, Minister_."

He looked over his newly cleaned desk again. There was something soulless about the spotlessness. He wondered, for only the seventh time that day, what Audrey was doing at that very instant.

She was sipping at a thick potato soup with bacon and chives mixed in, nodding while her mother described her latest photographic assignment. Eventually the talk of apertures and lighting and shutter speeds faded away, and Audrey became aware that her mother was looking at her.

"What?" Audrey said at once. "What is it?"

"I just like to look at you, is all," Audrey's mother said. "Aren't I allowed to do that?"

Audrey put down her bowl. "Could I have a drink of your soda?"

"Sure, go ahead."

Dandelion and burdock soda was a peculiar taste for Audrey: never exactly acquired, but she enjoyed the bite of it in small amounts, on days when she needed a little bracing.

"So how do you like—" she began, just as her mum said, "I was thinking that tonight we'd—"

Both women fell silent. Audrey put the glass back onto the table with a clink, and said, "You go first."

"I was thinking that tonight we could go to this gallery opening. It's going to be very hip – the First Minister himself is going to be there. It's one of the biggest events of the season."

"Mum, I'd really rather stay in, it was a long train ride."

"Stay in? Audrey, we've only got a week together, I'd like to spend it with you."

"But this gallery—you really want to go?"

"Well, yes. Many of my friends will be there. I'd like you to—" Audrey's mum sighed, and scowled. "I know that you're tired, Audrey, but tomorrow we don't have anything planned and you can sleep all you like. This is your best chance to get a look at my career – I mean, the fun part of it. I'd like you to know a bit about my world."

World. There was that word again. Worlds that co-existed yet were all but unaware of each other. Arms smugglers and gun manufacturers had their social circles and calendars, and of course, so must artists and photographers. So Audrey's mum was offering her a glimpse of one world – it wasn't magic, but when all you have is a hammer…

"Sure, Mum, I'm sure it'll be great," Audrey said. She set back into her soup.

"Now, what were you going to say, honey?"

"Um… have you ever read anything by Edgar Allan Poe?"

Audrey's mum's face broke into a wide smile, the most genuine one Audrey had seen that day. "Of course! I was a little obsessed with him, back in uni." She giggled, nervously, and went on, "I've been rereading a few of his works – poems, mostly, it's bedtime reading, but I've been meaning to read all of his works, when I get a little spare time, of course. Poe's a genius. Why do you ask?"

Audrey took courage. "I, um, I've just started getting into him… There's this bookshop that I used to frequent, and it closed down, but the owner told me about Poe…"

And they fell to talking. Audrey found herself patching up the story, leaving what seemed to her to be obvious gaps but her mum listened, nodding, her chin on her hand. They managed to stay on the subject of Poe, and gradually shift to talking about short stories in general, as they finished their meal and coffee and headed out in the direction of the apartment.

Their talk tapered off somewhere in the car, but Audrey told herself this was okay, they had gotten off to a fine start already. You couldn't win every time.

They stopped off at her mum's apartment to drop off Audrey's suitcase, then continued to the gallery, held in a very fine old building lit by repurposed gaslamps. As they entered the foyer there was a mural on the wall spelling out "_The Scottish Peace_," with the names of the artists involved, with the name "Lucy Trotwood" (that was Audrey's mum, awkward married name and all) picked out prominently.

Inside was… well, it was an exhibit of modern photography, which meant there was a lot of black-and-white and more nudity than Audrey really thought was necessary. She shadowed her mother as the established artist went around greeting contracts and friends, but said little. All that her mother said was, "My daughter, Audrey… she lives in London."

The evening passed slowly, with canapés that failed to tempt Audrey at all and constant small talk. Eventually Audrey managed to disengage from shadowing her mother, and wander around the gallery, just looking at the pictures, and when they failed to interest her anymore, watching the microphone and stage setup for the speech. There was a big fuss and to-do – security and announcements – when the First Minister of Scotland arrived, and everyone was shepherded to the elevated platform to hear his speech.

There was applause, and Audrey tuned out as the First Minister began to speak. She usually found politics boring, but lately it had actively begun to irritate her. She couldn't help but think of the wizarding war, and what the politicians were hiding…

"—And I'd like to thank the amazing artists we'll be honoring tonight, starting with Lucy Trotwood—"

Audrey caught that in time to start applauding. She watched the Minister as he talked, indicating the other artists and moving on to the superlative donors who had donated so much to the arts this past year.

Boresville.

Rather than listen to what the Minister had to say, Audrey reached into her purse and pulled out – yes, she was still carrying them – the magical sunglasses. There had to be magic up in Scotland – hadn't Percy said that the school for magic was somewhere in Scotland? Maybe one of the photographs was enchanted.

'_Enchanted to make the viewer believe they're looking at Fine Art_,' Audrey thought. She slid the glasses halfway up her nose as she stepped a ways behind her mother.

There were wizards in the crowd: she saw flashes of color and enchantment lingering on people's clothes, random people in the crowd. She grinned, and counted seven. She scanned the walls, but no color or light gleamed there. So instead she turned to the dais again, and saw –

There were silver cords strangling the First Minister.

She shook her head, and looked again. There were silver cords tying up the Front Minister, unfurling to some indeterminate point in the audience. The cords gripped his wrists as he gestured, they wound tight around his throat. They poured from his eyes and his mouth. Audrey's stomach turned at the sight. She couldn't look –

Where were they coming from?

She turned and scanned the room, her eyes darting to the people lit up by the gleam of magic. Without saying anything to her mother, without thinking, even, she walked through the crowd, slipping between dignitaries and glancing occasionally up the rims of her glasses to make sure she was seeing alright.

The cords connected to a person standing by the door, a middle-aged woman in a long grey dress. She wasn't holding a wand, but there was a faint glow about her, strongest in the hands clasped in front of her, and in her head. The cords were visible just before her. She was watching the First Minister intently.

Audrey stopped, and hesitated, unsure. The woman looked like any other attendee of the gallery opening – although the more Audrey looked, the less certain she could be of the woman's age. Nothing about her said she had to be a witch…

Nothing said that the spell on the First Minister was _necessarily _black magic.

'_Don't kid yourself, Audrey, that's black magic and you know it_,' she thought.

'_What do I do what do I do what do I do_?'

Her sunglasses went back into her purse. She swallowed hard and walked up to the woman. She tapped her on the shoulder.

"Lovely evening, isn't it?" she said.

The woman turned her head and stared at Audrey.

Audrey went on, breaking all her natural instincts as a British woman, went on cheerily, "I've never seen the First Minister talk before. He's a really swell speaker!"

'_Just pretend you're American, pretend you're American_,' Audrey told herself in a mantra. "But for my money, it's the young man standing just a _little _to the left that's the real dish."

The woman looked Audrey up and down, and her nose wrinkled, and she looked forward again.

"Do you come here often? I've never been to Edinburgh before. What do you think of this speech?"

"I beg your pardon, but I'm trying to listen to the Minister," the woman said. She stepped away from Audrey.

Audrey followed. "I, uh, is that really what you're trying to do? Because I, uh, I kind of doubt your motives…"

Then the woman reached into her purse and Audrey prepared for her to take out her wand. What happened instead was that Audrey's legs irresistibly locked together, and it was only by pinwheeling her arms for a second that she could regain balance. If she had any doubt that the woman was a witch, it was obliterated.

The woman leaned in closer to Audrey and said, "You keep out of my business, you filthy little _Muggle_."

Audrey felt herself going red. "What are you doing to the Minister?" she asked.

The woman looked incredulous. "You little slut," she breathed. She seized a hold of Audrey's collar, pulled her forward, then –

"No!" Audrey cried –

Shoved her backwards. Audrey fell back and heard a _crack_, and then time seemed to become unhinged. The room span and there was noise and someone running towards her.

She was afraid, but mostly it was the pain that got to her, a hot pain coursing through her head and her only thought was, '_What if I really hurt something there_?'

"Audrey? Audrey, love, look at me, we're going to move you a little bit, okay? Audrey, how do you feel?"

"Dizzy," Audrey said. Someone picked her up under her armpits and someone else got her ankles and they took her to a room somewhere away, with a different ceiling. Then Audrey's mother was looming over her, saying gentle things and Audrey felt better. There was a glass of water pressed to her mouth, and Audrey drank.

A deep, sonorous voice approached, and a black man leaned over Audrey. He wore a kind smile and sweeping robes of purple and gold. He uncorked a small bottle and waved it gently under Audrey's nose.

There was a strong smell, like seawater and cloves. She revived; the ache in her head vanished at once, and she could think clearly. She struggled to sit up.

"Don't, dear heart, you fell and hit your head. How are you feeling?"

"Better," Audrey croaked. "Loads better." She sat up. She looked at the man who was now pocketing his bottle. Wait, who carried smelling salts in this day and age? "Do you have smelling salts?"

He halted in replacing the bottle, then gave her a shrewd look. "Of a sort," he said.

"What, did you pop out of a Jane Austen book?"

"_Audrey_… please don't mind my daughter, she always says what's on her mind."

"I do not mind," the man said.

"You know," Audrey said to him, pointing. "You know what that woman was up to. She's – she's a—she's not of a Muggle," she said, the words bumbling up as she spoke.

And the man nodded.

He _nodded!_

"Not a what?" Audrey's mother asked.

"Your daughter is very perceptive," the man said kindly, turning to Audrey's mother. "I will need to ask her some questions, without interruption. May I?"

"Of course. Audrey, have some more water."

Audrey gulped at the glass, and squeezed her mum's hand to show gratitude, affection, solidarity, who knew what else. "Mum?" she said.

"Yes?"

"Could you… could you give us a little privacy?"

"Are you sure?"

Audrey did a quick calculation. Enemy of the lady who was enchanting the First Minister. Enemy of my enemy is my friend. She nodded. "Yeah."

"Okay…" Lucy Trotwood squeezed her daughter's hand a moment, then got up and left them, tottering uneasily in her heeled boots. She hovered by a photograph of a weary bagpiper.

Audrey turned to the man and asked, in a soft voice, "Who are you?"

"My name is Kingsley Shacklebolt. You are…?"

"Audrey Trotwood."

"You interrupted a witch named Megaera Mulciber, on whom I have been keeping tabs for some time. She has fled the premises, but my associate is trailing her."

"Keeping tabs?" Audrey repeated.

"She has the First Minister under a spell – he has been enchanted so for over a month, but you weakened the force of the spell, for a while."

"What spell, though?"

"The Imperius Curse, if I'm any judge." In response to Audrey's silence, he said, "You don't know what that is?"

"Um… I may have heard of it… once or twice…?" She tried to remember if Percy had brought it up, but the word wasn't ringing any bells.

A woman approached, and Audrey squinted to see her against the lights. "Another of my associates," Kingsley Shacklebolt said, "Hestia Jones."

"The Minister's going to be fine. Looks like he's in his own mind – for now. And these were on the floor," She held out a pair of sunglasses, and Audrey reached out, but before she could grasp them, Shacklebolt took them.

"Those're mine," Audrey said.

The man held them, and ran his hand over them. "Ollivander work," he said.

"You're sure?" Hestia Jones asked.

"Yes."

"You're very good at that, sir."

"Thank you, Miss Jones."

"I'll mind the crowd," Hestia Jones said. She nodded to Audrey. "Hope you feel better soon," and she was gone. Just like magic.

"How did you know that was Ollivander work?" Audrey demanded of Shacklebolt. "Also, those are mine."

"I make a point of recognizing magical styles, you might say," he said. "And the Ollivander family is a particularly odd one. They'll craft anything, for any buyer, if they like the challenge." He looked at her keenly. "How did you get this?"

"How do I know I can trust you?"

He grinned. "That's good questioning. How can I prove myself to you?"

"Do you know… a Miss Johnson?"

"Johnson is a very common name, Miss Trotwood," Shacklebolt said, his gaze level. "But do you mean Angelina Johnson?"

She nodded.

"She's something of a protégée of mine. She has a natural talent for leadership – not least of which, wrangling the Weasley twins to obey some authority other than their own taste for mischief."

Audrey sighed, letting out a breath she hadn't even realized she was holding. "I didn't buy this myself," she said, pointing to the sunglasses. "One day I was – I was at work, and a young man – I'd never seen him before, I thought he was some kind of dandy or something – he gave them to me. Said someone else had commissioned him to make them."

Look at her, spy queen extraordinaire, giving him everything she had. She was a regular Mata Hari. She was pathetic.

He nodded, looking into her eyes steadily. "Do you remember the name of the person who made them for you?"

"Hector. Hector Ollivander."

"And who commissioned this work?"

She lowered her eyes. She stared at her knees.

"Miss Trotwood?"

"One of the Weasley brothers." She looked up at him again.

He chuckled and shook his head. "The Weasley boys do have a love for the extravagant, don't they? Which brother, do you remember?"

"Fred. There was a note," She added. "It said that I ought to use the glasses just to keep myself safe."

'_Audrey, what are you doing? Remember what happened the last time you tried this bullshit! Angelina Johnson didn't go along with your lie! Fred won't either! Audrey, aren't you listening to me!_' shrieked her conscience.

Audrey ignored her conscience.

"Then it was a gift meant in love, and should be cherished. Very well, Miss Trotwood – honor that love by keeping yourself safe. You'll do that?"

She nodded. "Yeah. Absolutely. Thanks so much, Mr. Shacklebolt."

He got to his feet, and Lucy, Audrey's mum, hurried over to them. Audrey began to stand up, and her mom supported her. "Are you sure you can stand, dear?"

"Yeah – just as long as we go home, like, right now?" Audrey said.

"Of course. Thank you for – whatever help you offered, Mr. Shacklebolt," Lucy didn't look entirely grateful. She was staring at Mr. Shacklebolt as if she was fixing his image in her mind, like she had a few choice questions to make of him the next time they met. "We're much obliged."

"Please, think nothing of it," Mr. Shacklebolt's smile was warmth and generosity itself, and it was only then that Audrey noticed the wand in his hand. Perhaps she hadn't fully recovered from that fall, because she didn't think of anything to say or to stop him, before he cast a spell.

"_Obliviate_."

His wand was pointed at Audrey's mum. Audrey turned to watch her mum _change_. From worried, inquisitive, sharp and unsatisfied, she became unfocused and tottering, hanging onto Audrey for support while her eyes stared out into nothing.

"You and your daughter had a wonderful time at tonight's event, until Audrey fell on the back of her head. She won't suffer any long-term damage, but she does have a headache and needs to go home. You will go home and pass a pleasant evening, and you will think to update your house's security systems."

"Yes… yes, that sounds… lovely."

Audrey expected Kingsley Shacklebolt to vanish before her very eyes, but instead he put his wand away, nodded to them both, and walked away, towards the First Minister. All things told, she would have preferred the vanishing into thin air.

"Audrey? What are you looking at?"

"Nothing, Mum." She looked at her mother and was relieved to see all of Lucy's stress in place again.

"That was quite a fall you had. You ready to go home? Audrey?"

"Yeah… I don't feel so good, Mum."

"Oh, well, we'll get you set up. And tomorrow, we're doing nothing and you can sleep all you like."


	13. Hoarding

Next Chapter:

It feels really silly of me to even use the word 'revolution' when there are so many protests around the world and calls for profound change. I'm just trying to get the story out.

Also, we begin this chapter with an alternate point of view interlude. If this Molly Weasley seems more despairing than her in-canon self, well, remember it's just my interpretation, not gospel. I may be projecting something here.

Muriel Prewett, aunt to Molly Weasley _née _Prewett, lived on the Prewett ancestral estate, land that had belonged to that illustrious clan since the days of William the Conqueror – or perhaps before, but 1089 was the only year that anyone bothered to write the fact down. Its name was likewise hard to pin down, as it was written down in several places but spelled very differently each time. Tradition held that it was pronounced something like "Prewcross Grange." The land was magnificent.

It was also in terrible disrepair, because lands, strange as it seems, do not regulate themselves. Prewcross Grange, the house, was a wreck, and the estate a wilderness. Rather like the Weasleys, the Prewetts had been rather short on cash for the past century, or, to hear Muriel tell it, ever since the Crown had stopped hosting those fine old Crusades.

Now, Muriel, the only Prewett still at Prewcross Grange (and she wouldn't let any grasping relatives take it from her while she yet breathed, by Merlin), played hostess to Molly and her husband, Arthur.

The matrons of Prewcross Grange had for generations beyond count been renowned for their hospitality and graciousness, and their compassion to any weary pilgrim who set foot in their door. Sadly, in this respect Muriel did not hold with tradition. She did not see why Molly, with seven children scattered to the four winds, should be in anything less than fighting spirits. Muriel sniffed and hemmed and _muttered_ so provokingly that it was all Arthur could do not to hex his own aunt-in-law into next week. But Arthur held his tongue.

Truth be told, Arthur Weasley sometimes got impatient with his own wife. He wanted her in fighting spirits – he didn't want this despairing, quiet shade who made him so frightened. He wanted his wife back.

His brave, stern little Mollywobbles – who feared no creature that Charlie brought in from the wild, who had out-tricked the twins and endured Ginny's tantrums, the heroine of the chicken-pox-times-five epidemic and the last-minute Christmas presents – would lie on her side in bed almost all the day. Not asleep, not quite awake either, just looking out as the north light traced its slow way over the wall. By night she'd sit in the little study she and Arthur had to share, reviewing the correspondence Arthur had made, and remembering. She would hold a small, battered old cigar box in front of her – and it had been _years_ since Arthur had even brought a cigar into the Burrow.

The box had about a dozen little keepsakes. Most of them were letters. There was one sky-blue hair ribbon, and a broken bracelet, just big enough to fit around a newborn's wrist.

Molly would touch each keepsake, and almost every night she would read the letters again, and again. Inside a battered envelope, there was a pristine invitation to Molly and Arthur's wedding. There were letters from Hogwarts, from the start of term. There was one letter from Bill that still smelled a little like almond blossoms and Mediterranean sunlight, and one postcard from Charlie, where the note's brevity was matched by the beauty of the little dragon engraving on the other side.

There were no photographs. Molly hadn't had the time to grab them. It was just the letters from her drawer – and maybe not even the most precious of those letters, she knew there were some left behind, and she wished she had them. She wished she had her children around her. Oh, god, she wished.

Molly knew that Arthur worried about her. So she took a small dose of White King's Rheum to make sure she could go to sleep, and every night she resolved to herself that tomorrow morning she would wake up and dress nicely, and go to the kitchen and start cooking something and she'd feel alive. And every morning she broke that promise.

This particular night, late into December, as she waited for exhaustion, she stared at a letter from Percy. This was Percy's start of term letter from his seventh year, when Fred, George, Ron, and Ginny had all entered Hogwarts safely with no mishaps, when the Dementors were ranging around the school but Percy wasn't afraid, he was sure that he could manage them, when he mentioned that he was already studying for his N.E.W.T.S.

Why do we do this, Molly wondered. Why do we try to hoard the pieces of those that we love so much?

She knew, of course, that she had just answered her own question. But in the fashion of late-night existential questions, she could not adequately answer it.

She got up and went to the window. Snow was falling on the land of Prewcross Grange. This had been Prewett land for untold years. Molly was a Prewett born. She should be strong here.

Maybe this depression _was_ as strong as she could be.

Great-Aunt Muriel had hinted from time to time that she might leave this land to one of Molly's children. She'd made vague statements about how the land should stay within the family, about how Percival was a proud old Prewett name, about how Molly had "worked so hard" and "hard work should be rewarded."

When Molly had been young, first a bride and then a young mother, she'd believed Great-Aunt Muriel when she said this. Those remarks would become the highlight of an otherwise unbearable holiday. Molly had no shortage of novels that told charming stories of that very circumstance. In those stories, the patient, pure, and hard-working girls were lifted out of poverty by the kindness of eccentric relations and went on to live lives of bliss and indulgence.

But when money had started to grow tight, when Arthur hadn't advanced at the office and there were three little boys (and still no girl, Molly wanted her little girl), and Great-Aunt Muriel's will stayed an inscrutable mystery, locked up in those vaults of hers, Molly had stopped believing the old woman. She'd begun slowly giving up dreams – at least, the sort of dreams that are answered by benevolently crochety aunts. Molly learned to rely on the dreams that are answered by hard-working husbands who come in after hours but always with a smile and maybe a bar of chocolate for the kids.

Great-Aunt Muriel wasn't interested in being a fairy godmother or rewarding the diligent (she had been a Gryffindor, not a Hufflepuff, for Morgana's sake). Great-Aunt Muriel was interested in seeing how far she could lift Molly's hopes, and in pitting the sad remnants of the Prewett family against each other as long as she bitterly drew breath to laugh at them all.

Great-Aunt Muriel was a very old woman, who had outlived her husband, her sole child, and most of her friends, and was now in a great deal of pain, every day. Great-Aunt Muriel was to be pitied.

Molly told herself that a lot, over the years.

The snow continued to blanket the land. From the little light afforded by the windows, Molly could watch the flaws of the wilderness slowly vanish under the white.

She watched the snowfall until the night gradually lightened into day. A little peace settled in Molly's heart.

She sighed, and reread Percy's letter a final time before returning it to the cigar box.

ooo

Audrey reflected that, if you could hoard emotions, she was developing a hoarding problem.

She was, specifically, hoarding her relationship with Percy Weasley. She had lied about the fact to a wizard. To someone who was trying to help her – maybe, in the long run, help Percy.

And the worst of it was, she didn't even feel bad about it.

Kingsley Shacklebolt had seemed like an utterly fantastic guy, just the sort of guy in whom you should put your trust, a man of reason and experience and calm – he had seemed like all of that, right up until the moment he took out his wand and wiped away Audrey's mother's memories.

And Audrey had seen memories wiped before, but that was one wizard (Percy, her dear bespectacled enchanter) wiping the threat out of the head of another wizard (that frightening man who had called Audrey a 'degenerate.' She hadn't forgotten that word). Audrey's mum couldn't fight back. She couldn't have possibly even foreseen it, yet it had happened anyway.

And Audrey pieced together bits and pieces of what she had heard, and she had an understanding that memory wipes were commonplace.

That really didn't help.

If Kingsley had looked smug, or had given a wry little smirk, or had put his finger to his lips in a "shhh" gesture, that would have made things clearer. He would have been evil, a villain, glorying in his power over a stupid Muggle woman. But he hadn't done any of that. He'd looked tired, instead. He'd nodded, briefly, in satisfaction of a job well done. And that was what had really gotten to Audrey. That the modification of her mother's memory was, to a wizard, a nice _convenience_.

000

Audrey didn't want to go over these memories over and again, but it stuck with her like a bad song in her head. The entire rest of the evening after they got home, the next morning when she saw her mother checking the storm windows and counting the keys, for the next week whenever her mother forgot anything, even if it was a lull in the sentence while she found the right word.

"Focus on something else," Audrey told herself, as she put the kettle on for the morning cup of tea. "Anything else."

The apartment was empty; her mother was out for her morning jog. It was Audrey's last full day in Edinburgh. Tomorrow she would return to London and her ordinary life.

Percy. Think about Percy. Percy had said she was a Ravenclaw, and she still hadn't gotten around to asking anybody what that meant. It meant asking questions. It meant wanting to know more. Percy had said that.

Arbitrarily, she decided that Ravenclaw also meant being the kind of person to wring out their memories over and over again, like a rag that starts to go damp but somehow always regains its moisture when you aren't looking. And maybe – maybe Ravenclaw means someone who doesn't really feel bad about lying.

She couldn't bring herself to feel bad about lying to Kingsley Shacklebolt. Not after what he'd done. She couldn't avenge what had happened to her mother – but she could keep her own secrets.

And wasn't it fair? Didn't wizards lie to Muggles something close to _constantly_?

Yeah, two wrongs didn't make a right, but Audrey was willing to call it fair.

The tea boiled just as she heard footsteps in the hallway. Perfect. Audrey would mix up a perfect cup of builder's brew, and she and her mother would eat breakfast together.

Instead of Lucy swinging the door open, the doorbell rang.

Weird.

Audrey steeled herself, and had plenty of time between the kitchenette and the doorway exactly what kind of magical conspiracy she may have gotten tangled up into, and what kind of wizard would be waiting for her on the other side (_maybe Percy_?). She opened the door –

"Mum?" she looked a little lower. "_Puppy?_"

"Thanks for getting the door, love," Lucy Trotwood said, as she stepped over the threshold. "This little guy's a wriggler. I didn't trust him to stay put if I even let one hand loose. Get out some newspaper, will you?"

There was a puppy in Lucy's arms, with snowflakes still melting on his curled fur. He was brown and black, and Audrey couldn't even begin to guess his breed.

"Where did you get a puppy?" she asked her mother.

"Cardboard box on the corner. He was all alone in there. Obviously a Christmas gift." Lucy's tone grew venomous. "Gift-wrapped under the tree, and left to starve on a street corner before New Year's. The people who treat animals like this ought to be hanged. And actually – I think he's a little she."

"So you adopted a dog? Just like that?" Audrey took out yesterday's newspapers and spread them out in a corner of the kitchen, near the oven. The oven wasn't on, she just remembered reading about bringing a rabbit in from the cold and warming the critter up on the oven door, so maybe it would help. "What about licenses? Leads? Food?"

"I do have a little nest egg tucked away, Audrey. You'll look after her while I do a little shopping today."

Impulsiveness like this was not in Lucy's vocabulary. Audrey tried again. "Mum, you can't keep her."

"Sure, but I can. The lease allows pets, and I've been such a good tenant I can talk the landlady around. Oh, and she'll come with me on all my runs, won't you, love? Here you go, here's the floor." Lucy knelt and set the puppy down on the floor, on the newspapers. The pup had large and sturdy-looking legs and paws, which stood in stark contrast to her softness and smallness. She plonked her rear down on the newspapers and looked around, confused and admittedly adorable.

"You don't even know what breed she is."

"Of course I do. She's an Airedale Terrier, I'll get her registered this afternoon. They're very clever dogs, and excellent guard animals."  
>"Guard?" Audrey repeated, surprised.<p>

"Oh, yes. I've been worrying all week about security – and a dog is just the thing. I'll train her right and she'll protect the house, once she's a little bigger and she's got her footing."

"Mum, I—" Audrey was about to say '_I think this is a bad idea_,' but stopped herself. The little pup did need a home, and after all, it was still sort-of Christmas. Lucy had owned dogs before (when Audrey was a little girl) and would be responsible enough. Even if it was an effect of Kingsley's Memory Wipe spell, it wasn't a bad effect. Maybe Lucy now would go back to normal, only with a little furry friend.

"Yes, dear?" Lucy asked.

"I'd – like you to drink your tea before it gets too cold. And this little pup sure is sweet. What will you name her?"

"What will _we _name her?" Lucy reached out and squeezed Audrey's hand.

000

Audrey suggested naming the pup Lethe, after the river of forgetfulness, but Lucy didn't like the sound of it. Then Lucy asked where Audrey got the name Lethe, and the answer was Edgar Allan Poe.

So the names "Lenore" and "Annabel Lee" were tossed around, until the pup had an accident (spurred, no doubt, in terror of the prospect of becoming a Lenore). While Lucy cleaned up, Audrey dug up Edith Hamilton's _Mythology_. She rifled through the yellowed pages and proposed naming the dog "Mnemosyne," after the goddess of memory and mother of the nine Muses.

Lucy said that wouldn't fit on a dog tag, but the name "Nemo" would. And so Lucy got a little terrier puppy named for the goddess of memory.

Audrey thought it was very appropriate.

Honestly, Audrey was in love with Nemo after an hour, so it was harder than she'd expected to leave Edinburgh. But time marched on.

"Take care of yourself, Mum," Audrey said at the train station. She hugged her mother and held her tight. "I love you."

"Bless you, Audrey, I'll be fine." Lucy was a bit taken aback by the affection. "I love you, too, dear. I'll call you when I'm in London – sometime in the spring."

Spring. That seemed absurdly far away. "Be safe," Audrey said to her.

"You, too." Lucy gave her daughter a long look, and smiled. "I'm glad you came up. Happy New Year, darling."

"Happy New Year, Mum." Audrey smiled, squeezed her mother's hand, and walked away, her suitcase rolling along behind her.

She and her mother, they had—they had come to some sort of peace. It had been a good visit, after all. But Lucy had been ready to leave. Nemo the Airedale Terrier was at home, tended to by a neighbor, but she waited for Lucy. Lucy's photographs and her Edinburgh life were waiting for her. They wouldn't stop because Audrey left.

Audrey found that fact comforting.

One train station was much like another. Audrey slept on the train back to London, and was welcomed by the glittering lights and thick fog of her home town. Somewhere out there all the aspects of London life, from the Tate Modern's curators to the workmen ordering their fish and chips, went on, not affected that she had left or that she had returned.

Percy was out there somewhere.

She smiled, and headed to the Underground, to make her way home at rush hour.

It was an exhausted Audrey who returned to the flat. Jennifer was already there, preparing spaghetti with mushroom sauce.

Audrey greeted her and hugged her (surprising someone for the second time that day with a display of affection) and hurried to her room to kick off her shoes and get comfortable.

When Audrey opened the door to her room, she saw a flutter at the window.

At first she thought it was snowing, then she thought it was her imagination. But when she switched on the light, she saw a piece of paper wedged in between the sill and the sash.

She lifted up the lower pane, took the paper out, and closed the window. She peered out into the darkness, but there was no answering flutter. Or maybe there was, but it was so foggy she didn't see it.

Audrey sat on her bed and looked at the paper. It had been folded into a seven-pointed star. She unfolded it carefully.

It said,

"_If you want to be a part of the Chinese Food at Midnight Revolution, then be in Leicester Square, at the back of the ticket-selling booth, tomorrow night, seven p.m. We'll provide dinner._"

Below, it added, "_If you don't want to come, we will understand. This will be dangerous_." It also had the day's date.

Audrey could barely breathe.


	14. Lemon Biscuits

Author's Note: My HEARTFELT thanks to those of you who wrote in to tell me about this chapter and the previous chapters' formatting issues. I wasn't expecting such quick responses, let alone in such volume. Thank you for letting me know! I hope this double-update lives up to expectations... :)

000

The next night, at seven p.m., a coterie of young adults loitered in Leicester Square. This was not unusual in the least. The square was very crowded, and groups of young adults filtered in and out of the surrounding pubs and cinemas, in various states of merriment and drunkenness. This particular coterie, however, was odd. Two of the gang were bent with their heads close together, but they were not romantically entangled, and their dialogue was not promising in that direction.

"Ow, ow, ow, mind the nose, Chang."

"If you would stand still, life would be much easier for the both of us, _Weasley_."

The three people around exploded in laughter, carefully timed to last four seconds before subsiding. Still chortling, Angelina Johnson said "Keep it down, kids. And Fred, let the woman work."

"I'm almost done, anyway," Cho Chang said. She slipped her wand behind her ear and reached up with both hands to Fred's face. She rubbed his cheeks with her thumbs, and the cheekbones lengthened and lifted. She squinted, muttered another spell, and her fingers raked his hairline, eliminating the last traces of ginger at the roots of his dark brown hair.

"Take a look," she said. "How is the job?"

Angelina Johnson, Lee Jordan, and George Weasley turned to look.

"Wow!" George exclaimed. "We're _not _identical!"

"You really aren't," Lee said, looking between the two of them. "Nondescript but distinct."

"This is some of your best work to date," Angelina said to Cho. "Well done."

"How did you get so good at enchanting faces?" George asked.

"And when did you start tucking your wand behind your ear?" Fred asked.

"Knock that off," Angelina told them. "No more finishing each others' sentences."

"Yes, Mum…"

"_Or _talking in unison!"

"To answer your questions," Cho said, taking her wand in hand again and slipping it into her purse, "The first, I spent months researching a way to restore Marietta's face. You remember Marietta? I learned a lot, trying to help her. As to the second question, you may say that Miss Lovegood was a bad influence on me."

"A bad influence?" Fred repeated. "Good old Loony? Never."

"Call her Luna," Cho said, "and tell me, if you can, why that young lady has been staring at us. Over there. By the tickets queue."

The group turned and looked.

"It's Audrey," George said. "By Jove. I didn't think she would make it."

Angelina smiled. "I'll go bring her over, seeing as I haven't had my hair dyed or my face rearranged."

She returned a minute later, her hand on Audrey's shoulders. The Muggle was tense and pale, clutching a huge satchel to her with white fingers. She nodded to Lee, the only one she recognized. She began speaking in a rush,

"I'm so glad I got your message. _So _glad. I just prepared as best I could – hold on –" she reached into her satchel and pulled out a horseshoe. "I nicked this from my neighbor's front garden – she won't miss it, the yard's full of knickknacks – and this –" she pulled out a little tin of salt – "this is always a protection against evil magic, I know that much, and – here –" the horseshoe and salt she handed to George, while she rummaged in her satchel and pulled out a little net with three wrinkled lemons – "these were the best I could get at the market. Well, they were on clearance. They're good against vampires; not many people know that. And a wren feather – heh, actually I picked this up when I was a little kid, wrens are good luck, right? Right? … Guys?"

"Well, _hm_, you can't fault her for coming prepared, folks," Lee said, with a little cough.

Audrey stared and felt her face starting to go hot. "Is this not the right stuff?" she asked. "Should I have brought a broomstick?"

"Points for thoroughness, Audrey," Angelina said, "but these things are… well… 'behind the times' might be one way to put it. But I'm glad you came," she added hurriedly. "The most important thing that you brought is yourself. We're glad to have you. Aren't we?"

Audrey looked around at the circle of nodding faces. She frowned at the altered Weasley twins, and Cho Chang. "Do I know you?"

"It's us, Trotwood," Fred said, leaning in conspiratorially. "Fred and George, just a little glamoured up."

"Oh," Audrey whispered.

"And you haven't met Cho before. Cho Chang, Audrey Trotwood. You'll be working together tonight."

"So what am I doing?" Audrey asked, spinning to look at Angelina.

"Standing guard," Angelina told her, "keeping watch; giving the appearance of perfect normalcy, thank you very much."

"And what are _you _doing?" Audrey shook her head. "No, wait, don't tell me – best if I don't know, I guess. Need to know basis, right?"

"Thank you for understanding," Angelina said. "Now—"

"There isn't a moment to lose, folks." Lee cleared his throat and started walking, and talking in a loud, cheery tone, "Come on, guys, I'm freezing out here, I need a drink!"

"You need to be taken down a peg," Angelina said, in a similarly boisterous tone as the group began to move. Audrey fell silent, and observed, shy and wondering at this apparently mundane transformation.

"We'll deliver," Cho Chang added. Audrey noticed that she was very pretty, and dressed primly, and glanced about in every direction as they walked, even as she added, "We're going to kick your arse at Trivia Night—"

"Never!" George cried, and Fred disagreed with him, and in a merry charade they left Leicester Square.

Audrey did her best to keep track of their route, as they left the theaters behind and headed north-east. It was so dark that Audrey did not bother reaching for her sunglasses, though she had them – kept in a special pocket to keep them from being crushed. She was beginning to feel like a right tit for bringing along the paraphernalia. _Lemons_? Why had she thought _lemons_ could do anyone the slightest bit of good?

They stopped at a nondescript building, across the street from a nondescript pub.

"Is this where we're getting dinner?" Audrey asked.

"No," Cho said, bluntly.

Angelina shook her head. "We'll grab dinner afterwards. This shouldn't take more than…" Angelina checked her watch. "Actually, never mind how long it'll take. We'll grab dinner later."

"Alright," Audrey said, completely unconvinced, but reminding herself she was used to going hungry.

Angelina said to Audrey, "You two are standing watch. Keep an eye on both ends of the street. Cho, you got the spell ready?"

"_Vox Smaragdus_," Cho said. A light glimmered on Angelina's left ear for a minute: an emerald earring that Audrey hadn't noticed before.

"What are we looking for?" Audrey asked.

"Suspicious characters. Magical folk may come looking for us; Muggles may investigate where it isn't safe."

"Hope you don't mind lying to coppers," one of the twins – damn, Audrey was back to square one, unable to tell them apart – said to her.

"See you later, then," Angelina said, and the three boys followed her lead. They trooped down the stairs to the cellar of the building.

After an awkward silence, Cho and Audrey glanced at each other.

"So, to the pub?" Cho asked, at the same time that Audrey said, "What's Vox Smaugardus?"

"Keep the magic talk down," Cho said, glancing around. But she added, "Smaragdus means emerald. It's a spell meant to imitate a direct telephone call. I coined it myself." She smiled, and tucked her hair behind her right ear, where she wore an earring the exact match of Angelina's.

"Oohhh, that's wicked," Audrey said in a low voice. "Why emeralds? Are they good for communication, or, or divination, or…?"

"They were at an estate sale," Cho said. "Now seriously, let's get to that pub and order something, before we look too suspicious."

They went into the dismal little place, ordered a plate of chips and two beers, and sat at the sole table outside. Audrey carefully lay her satchel on the ground, with its handle looped over her leg. Time to ignore her hunger – an old habit, and a bad one. She shivered, ignored her stomach and wished that the little place at least had a heat lamp. Maybe she should have ordered a cup of tea.

Their chips arrived and Cho picked at them gradually. Audrey took to eating them with clocklike regularity. The awkwardness became nearly palpable.

"We should really be acting like we're old friends, or something," Cho said at last. "Having a chat. Catching up."

"Well…" Audrey looked around, anywhere but Cho's face, "if we can't talk about… um… hocus pocus…"

"Very inadvisable."

"… I just visited my mum in Edinburgh, for New Year's."

"Oh! And how was that?" Cho instantly assumed a manner of consuming interest, and it was easy for Audrey to talk about Edinburgh, especially to describe little Nemo.

When Audrey exhausted the topic of the Edinburgh visit, she fell silent with relief. As she took a sip of beer, she noticed Cho scan the street up and down, her expression briefly fierce before turning back to Audrey and saying, "You know, what you said about the art gallery reminded me, I read the most _fascinating _article the other day about the arts…"

"Do tell?" Audrey asked, and Cho went into something of a lecture. Audrey, as she listened, reflected that this conversation setup, this trade-off of long lectures on an impersonal topic, was a safe way to go, to kill time while keeping up the façade of friendship. This was a fine strategy, until Audrey found herself getting genuinely interested.

At one point Cho stopped. "Audrey," she said, "You've been looking at me with your eyes getting wider and wider and your hand pressed to your mouth for five minutes. Now do I have something in my teeth, or -?"

"Oh! It's – it's nothing, I don't want to stop your story –"

"Your expression is giving me the creeps. I can't go on."

"Okay – it's just – I had a question, about that thing you mentioned, about authorial context. See, my stepsister told me once that you shouldn't consider the author at all when looking at a work – but maybe I shouldn't be talking."  
>"What do you mean?" Cho asked.<p>

"I mean, uh, I thought we were doing a sort of a lecture, thing, not a back and forth."

"I'm fine with back and forth. But your stepsister is right," Cho added, "in one sense, and in another…"

And they went on, and Audrey found herself so involved in the conversation that she jumped when Angelina appeared next to the table. Audrey calmed herself down while Cho got to her feet at once. "Is everything-?"

"Worked like a charm," Angelina said. "The boys are down the street."

"It worked?"

"It worked fine, Chang, trust me here."

Audrey made a lot of noise getting to her feet and pulling up her satchel in such a way that it collided with the metal chair of the pub. She glanced at her watch. "Yeesh, is it that time already? Wow, that went… wait, you mean it's over? But nothing _happened_!" she said to Angelina, knowing she sounded childish and hating herself for it.

"That's good," Angelina said to her, a grin breaking out on her face. "No news is good news. We appreciate you standing watch – and we're glad you weren't needed."

"Oh." Audrey hefted her satchel to her shoulder. "I guess it's just a bit anti-climactic, that's all."

Cho laughed, and followed behind Audrey, who trailed after Angelina as they went up the street. "Maybe next time," Cho said.

The boys met them when they rounded a corner. One of the twins – Audrey thought it was George – winked at her. "Was that sufficiently chilling for you? Or should we get out some swashes and buckle them?"

"Come again?" Audrey asked.

"Isn't that what – you know – movies are full of?" George asked. "Swashbucklers. They're all the rage. Aren't they?"

Audrey shook her head. "You're a bit behind the times. Let's just get dinner, yes?"

"Actually, the time flew by," Cho said, speaking to Lee Jordan. "We got into quite a nice discussion about art."

Lee snorted. "Standing guard on a stakeout and gets in a talk about art. Trust a Ravenclaw for that."

"Wait –" Audrey started. "What did you say? Ravenclaw?"

Cho looked at her, but Angelina, Fred, and George all started to look very uncomfortable. "Keep it down," Angelina said. "Can this wait?"

"Please, I've wanted to know for ages – what's a Ravenclaw? Percy said that I'm one."

"Want a Ravenclaw?" Lee jabbed his thumb over at Cho. "Guess you're two of a kind."

Cho scrutinized Audrey, but gradually her eyes softened and she smiled wryly. "I'm a Ravenclaw," she said to her. "It's my Hogwarts House – one of four. Bywords—" She put a finger to her lips.

"Tell me more!" Audrey whispered fervently.

"I promise you I will, but now—" Cho's eyes widened, and Audrey felt the air move. With keen and terrible instinct, she knew that someone was standing behind her.

"Might I ask what kids like you are doing out on a night like this?" said a deep, imperious voice. A voice used to being obeyed.

Audrey caught George's eye. _Magic?_ She mouthed, and prayed he understood.

He did. He gave a quick nod, and his mouth framed a very potent swearword.

"I'm asking," continued the deep voice, "on account of a security breach not too far from here. Can you account for your whereabouts? What are you doing out here this late at night?"

The satchel had turned into a steel weight on Audrey's shoulder. She clung to it desperately – and inspiration struck. She turned around. Not quite looking at the looming, black-cloaked figure, she said, "Late night grocery run to Tesco. Making biscuits!"

"Biscuits?" The figure repeated. "Tesco?"

"Yep!" Audrey reached into her satchel and pulled out the bag of lemons. Her hand shook only a little. "Lemon biscuits – like Nanny used to make!"

"Oh, god, Muggles," the man muttered, not even bothering to be inaudible. "Sorry for the bother. Carry on," he said to the group at large. He turned, walked away, and he may have vanished but Audrey didn't see because she turned back to the group and gasped.

"Did I do alright?"

"You've earned your keep tonight, Trotwood," Fred said, putting an arm over her shoulders. Audrey looked around and her eyes met Cho's. In the midst of her confusion and late-onset panic, Audrey wanted to know one thing.

"Bywords," she said. "What are they?"

Everyone else looked confused, except for Cho. She leaned forward and whispered, "Intelligence, creativity, curiosity, quick thinking. Well done, Audrey."

"Ah," Audrey nodded, and tried to relax her hold on her satchel. "It's good to know at last."


	15. The Broadcast

The door opened with an almighty wrench, sending up puffs of dust into the spring sunlight. Viola Mellows entered the empty shop, trying the rotten floorboards. Her twin brother followed. "Well," Viola said, "here we are."

"Here we are, indeed," Sebastian echoed.

The store interior was not one to inspire confidence. It was narrow and dark, the wallpaper peeled off the walls, and there was a whiff in the air that suggested a raccoon had set up house. It was March of the year 1976, and Viola and Sebastian Mellows were recently orphaned, and standing in a building that their father had willed to them.

"That's what inheritance will get you," Sebastian said. "We ought to burn this place down for the insurance money."

"No! Never!" Viola exclaimed. "You need to think bigger. Look for the positives. We could rent this place."

"Renovations alone would cost us…"

"Or we could set up our own business."

"What kind? There's no kitchen, it's on a street no one can find, in a neighborhood no one likes, and it's dismal. It's dismal. There's no hope at all!"

Viola didn't answer for a minute. Then she seemed to see something beyond him for a minute, and lifted her dark head. "We could sell books."

000

It was March again, and Orsino's Bookshop was once again closed, boarded, and shuttered, empty as a sun didn't come out. Instead, the rains fell all day, and continued to fall intermittently into the evening. Another day of silence and emptiness and damp.

Until mine fifty two o'clock at night...

Magic opened the door, practical magic that drew the nails out of the boards and coaxed the hinges to swing open without a sound. Lee Jordan stuck his head in and scanned the place.

"Here we are," he said, "Unoccupied, and it looks like no one's been in for months. Good find, Audrey."

"Thanks," Audrey replied. Lee entered the shop, hefting a large, heavy rucksack. Audrey followed, and an associate of Lee's - a quiet witch about their own age, who was heavily bundled up against the cold - followed her, closing the door behind them. She carried a duffel bag.

Lee took out his wand. "_Lumos_," he said, "and _Lumos discretus_." Two lights flickered into being, one at the end of his wand, the other one about three feet above his head, a little brighter, but flickering, like candle-flame.

"The bookshelves have all been cleared away," Audrey said, pulling her woolen overcoat closer together. "Place looks so big now."

"That's what happens, when a place is abandoned. Now, is there a stairwell - ah! found it." Lee, and his light, disappeared around a corner.

"Stairwell? Can't we work down here?" Audrey asked.

"Nah. For a broadcast, the higher up you can be, the better," Lee told her. Behind him, the witch took out her wand and cast the same spells for light. "You coming up?"

"Yeah, of course," Audrey said.

"Lee, wait for us," said the witch. She glanced at Audrey and grinned. "He's always in a hurry when it comes to his program."

"My audience depends on me!" Came Lee's muffled voice from upstairs. Audrey followed him, and the witch came after. Lee was already heading up the next flight, and he said, half to himself, "My audience depends on me. I can't let them down. I'm something they can rely on in a world gone mad. Ten o'clock, every night, as close to regular as possible, and at this rate we're already going to be a little late. Audrey?"

"Yeah?"

"You say you know the bloke who owns this place?"

"Er. Yes. I told him I'd keep an eye on it."

"Is he a Muggle, too?"

"Yes," Audrey reached an empty landing that smelled of wet paper. "His sister was a witch, though. Muggle-born. She… she's gone."

"Ah. Say no more."

"He's in Copenhagen now. I think he wouldn't mind us using the space like this."

"Well," said the witch, following close behind, "It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission."

"What was his sister's name?" Lee asked.

"Viola Mellows."

"Viola Mellows," Lee repeated, separating the syllables as if to taste them.

"What are you thinking?" Audrey asked him.

"I just always like to commemorate the fallen. Viola Mellows will be remembered tonight. Do you think this is the top story?"

"Hold on," said the witch behind Audrey. "There's something in that shadow over there -" she probed out with her wand, and the light floated out to illuminate a narrow door set into the wall, half-hidden by boxes.

"Could be a closet," Lee said.

"It's an attic," the witch said with confidence. "I lived in a house just like this one back in Oxford. _Alohomora!_"

"Aloha?" Audrey repeated, wondering why the Hawaiian language suddenly entered the picture. She jumped when the door swung open. Shame flooded her - _silly girl, should have expected anything of magic!_ - but neither Lee nor the witch showed the slightest trace of being amused. A gust came from the attic, filling the landing with cold, damp air.

"Yep, definitely an attic," said the witch. "Come on, Lee, highest place in the house." She took the lead, stepping into what looked like sheer blackness.

"Hey, wait up!" Audrey said. She squeezed into the narrow space, and nearly tripped on the stairs. "By the way, Miss - I haven't yet got your name."

The attic was almost as cold as the outdoors. All kinds of unseen things skittered away in the shadows. In the light of her wand, the young woman truly did look like a witch, striped vividly in black and white. She turned to Audrey, her eyes wide. "Oh! Sorry. I'd forget my own head, these days. I'm Penelope Clearwater."

"Penelope Clearwater?" Audrey repeated. "Why, that's the prettiest name I've ever heard."

"Thank you," Penelope said with a smile. "Here, let's clear out some of these boxes -"

And just like that, she was using magic to lift boxes out of the way, stacking them in teetering towers around the walls of the attic. Lee pointed to a desk in the corner, and declared it was perfect. He thunked his rucksack on the surface, and began to set up his equipment. Penelope laid down the duffel bag next to it. Audrey found a rocking chair and perched on the edge, hugging her knees.

Lee set his light into a discarded lamp with a tap of his wand. He set to work with a focus that Audrey had never seen in him before. Penelope, on the other hand, had a mind to the physical state of the attic. She waved her wand, muttered something, and little balls of fire materialized and hovered in midair. They provided light and warmth, and chased away the damp. Now Audrey didn't have to worry that she would catch tuberculosis and die.

"Thanks," Audrey said to her. Penelope nodded - and that was the last acknowledgement that Audrey got.

Lee set up his equipment swiftly, with the ease born of much practice – box-thingy, light-thingy, dial-whatchamacallit, and the microphone. (According to Audrey.) In a few minutes, the radio flickered with a little red light, and Audrey held her breath.

Lee cleared his throat and said into the radio, "_Exordio verbia_ – Fawkes. Alright – testing, one, two. Good evening, listeners, and welcome... to Potterwatch."

Potterwatch. Where did they pull that name from? Audrey raked her memory. Potter was the last name of that kid, right? That special kid that Percy had always felt kind of took his place in the family. That kid. Right. And now he gets a whole radio program named after him. How did that come about?

'_Wow,_' she thought, '_I am _really _out of the loop_.'

She started back into awareness with the realization that Penelope Clearwater was talking in Irish.

000

"It's hopeless, Nan!" cried Penny Clearwater (twelve years old). "I can't learn magic _and _Irish. It's too hard. I won't!"

"Can't? Or won't? It's _too hard_?" Penny's Nan asked, giving her granddaughter a sharp look over the top of her glasses. She set her teacup on the table with a loud clink. "When _I _was a girl, everyone knew that flying on a broomstick and casting spells was impossible. Yet here stands my granddaughter, master of all these magics - "

"Nan, I'm only _learning _-"

"- and she tells me she can't be bothered to learn her own tongue."

"It's not my tongue, Nan. _English _is my tongue. And Irish is just a big bloody mess and it's impossible to speak! I've got homework to do!"

By saying that, Penny meant, she had things to learn; she was a _Ravenclaw_, she had standards to keep up; she had to grasp enlightenment, she had to do her family name proud, she had to show all of those Hogwarts students who said she was a quick learner _for a Muggle-born_… and to her twelve-year-old mind, all of these anxieties melded together and simplified into the singular, ominous phantom of homework. Simple.

Penny stood up from the table and began to clear away the tea things. "It's almost time for your shows, Nan," she said to her grandmother. "I can put on the telly and then you'll be all set for the afternoon…" She caught a glimpse of her Nan's face and faltered.

Her Nan, her indomitable Nan, was slouched at the table, one hand covering her face, looking as if Penny had struck her. Tears were leaking down her face, and she turned away from Penny as the girl tried to hug her.

"Nan, I'm sorry. I really am. I just -"

"It cuts me to the heart to hear you say that," her Nan said, her voice shaking. "Irish is your language; it's your history. The English did all that they could to wipe it from the face of the earth - from the schools and shops and boys and girls - and they've won, haven't they? They've reduced it to a _mess_. English is your tongue."

"Nan… I'm sorry-"

"Penny, please leave."

Penny, because she was twelve and uncertain and, frankly, wanted to leave, left. She went to her room, papered in royal blue with bronze trimmings, and tried to do her homework.

Today, the magic wouldn't come for her.

That evening, when she sat down to supper, Penny sat at her place and laid a small book beside her. It was a birthday gift, and had been opened only once so far. It was an English-to-Irish dictionary.

Penny sat between her parents and across from her grandmother. She said, stiffly, "Nan… I'm sorry."

"I know you are," her grandmother said. She was stiff and indomitable again. Neither of Penelope's parents knew anything was different - they had been out visiting earlier.

Penny swallowed hard, and admitted something she'd never told her parents. "Hogwarts isn't perfect. There's a lot of stupid people there… there are people who make fun of me for being Muggle-born. They think that I'm not good enough, and that I don't deserve to be there. Just because I'm Muggle-born. I've stopped talking about films and television programmes around… some people. It's stupid," she said, as if the stupidity of the thing was the most offensive aspect (and, to her Ravenclaw mind, it was).

"But that's awful!" said Penny's father.

"Why haven't you told us before?" asked her mother.

But Penny kept her eyes on her grandmother. In slow, stilting Irish with a terrible accent, she said, "I've been wrong and stubborn. I'm sorry. Please let me keep learning."

To the great confusion of Penny's parents, her grandmother chuckled and dabbed at her eyes. She grinned at the little witch across from her, and said in her native tongue, "There's hope for you yet, my girl."

000

"Thank you very much - that's our associate 'Calypso,' joining us for tonight. We can't always make this a bilingual broadcast, but when we can, we thank her from the bottom of our hearts. To our friends in Eire -" Lee glanced at Penelope to be sure he pronounced it correctly; she nodded, and he went on, "- you are not forgotten. Nor are you forgotten, Viola Mellows. Your story lives on. And now, to tonight's news…"

Penelope held up a hand and translated his phrase; Audrey distinctly heard the name "Viola Mellows" in the patter of Irish (or was it Gaelic? she could never keep the names straight).

When she finished, Lee started on the news.

In the first part was "news out of London," featuring a few correctives to recent items of government propaganda, and reports of major incidents. These were couched in language so secretive Audrey couldn't follow. Or else, it was actually very straightforward, but it was all the vocabulary of wizards. Periodically, Penelope Clearwater would take over and translate.

After half an hour of reports, Lee switched the topic. He started sharing pieces of advice and general encouragement. He told the people out there in the dark, "Keep each other safe… keep faith."

Penelope translated that into Irish, and Lee said, "Goodnight, everyone."

And that was it. He said another spell, and flipped a switch, and the red light went off. Lee sat there a moment, one hand caught in his dreadlocks. Then he cleared his throat and stood up, packing up his radio and equipment with the same swiftness and efficiency that he had unpacked them.

Audrey got to her feet, too. "That was amazing," she told him. "I think you did a really great job."

"Thanks," Lee told her, without looking at her.

"How long have you been doing this for?"

"What? Radio?"

"Well, announcing. You seem to have a knack for it."

"Oh, announcements. Well, I've been doing those for a long time…"

000

It was the tail end of Lee Jordan's second year at Hogwarts. He had just finished his Charms practical exam, and had his written Potions exam to look forward to in the afternoon. But in between, he raced to find Professor McGonagall's office. He stopped by the Great Hall to make himself a ham sandwich first, and ate on the run.

Before he barged open the door to McGonagall's office, Lee finished his sandwich, brushed all crumbs off, and did last minute adjustments to make sure he was within uniform regulations. Finally, he remembered his manners, and knocked.

Professor McGonagall called for him to come in. He entered, and though she kept an eye on the papers she was grading, he didn't waste time.

"Professor," he said, "You need a new announcer for Quidditch games for next year. Estella Peakley is graduating this year, and I can be the new announcer."

Professor McGonagall tilted back, and looked at him sharply. "Is that so?"

"Yes! I - I'm not much of a flyer, but I've attended Quidditch games since I was a kid, and football and rugby matches besides - with my grandfathers. And my father works in the score box for the Appleby Arrows, you know. I know everything about how. You just have to give me a chance."

He braced himself. There were probably loads of kids lining up for the job - he was just twelve, and a half-blood to boot, and he'd never been a superb student, but he had to at least ask -

Professor McGonagall said, "You're very young."

"Yes, I know, Professor."

"But you're certainly passionate." Her eyes met his, and for a minute he thought he saw the quirk of a smile. "Miss Peakley is a very... industrious announcer, but I've thought these past four years we could use someone with a bit more zest. Very well, Jordan."

"What?"

"Don't '_what' _me, young man. You're the first to ask for the post, and you're the first in line."

"R-really? You mean it?"

"Yes. I believe initiative should be rewarded… and I know you have the experience, as well as the passion. You'll sit in the announcer's box with Miss Peakley and I for the Quidditch Final, and you'll be the announcer for the first game of next year. If you do well, you may well hold the position for the rest of your Hogwarts career."

"Oh, Professor-"

"_Contingent_, of course, on your academic and behavioral record remaining acceptable."

"Yes, Professor. You won't have a complaint about me, Professor." Won't the Weasley twins be surprised to hear _that_. "You will _not _regret this, Professor!"

Again, the fleeting trace of what may have been a smile. He must be hallucinating with glee. "We shall see. Your optimism is positively infectious, Mr. Jordan. Now I believe you have a Potions final to run to."

Lee checked his watch and bolted. He was out in the corridor when the bell rang, but he felt that it was worth it. He was practically walking on air.

Now the only thing that could go wrong was if the first Quidditch game of next year had something completely crazy and out of the blue, like a first-year becoming Seeker. But what were the odds of _that _happening? Come on. Better to focus on what was going right. He was a hopeful little scamp, going down to his Potions final.

000

"Didn't you start this when you were thirteen?" Penelope asked him.

Lee zipped up his backpack and started on the second bag. "Yeah. But I never pictured myself on the radio."

"People rarely do," Audrey added. "Picture themselves." Lee and Penelope both stared at her. "On the radio." She coughed. "Because the radio doesn't have pictures." She thought, '_Please God let the floor open up and swallow me whole_.'

"Oh!" Penelope cried. In a second Lee got the joke, too, and they chortled indecently. "I don't know where my mind is these days," Penelope said as she hoisted up her bag. "I just forget everything and it takes me longer than it should to get a joke."

"We all need more sleep than we're getting," Lee said. "Let's move out quickly."

Audrey led the way out of the attic, this time. Now that the broadcast was finished, she could relax. The store felt welcoming, somehow, despite the shadows and cold. Like the building was glad to be of use. Audrey wished she had a key to it, just so she could lock it up like a home.

Instead, she waited on the pavement while Penelope and Lee replaced the boards. Audrey rubbed her hands together and said "Well!" in a soft voice, unwilling to break the silence of the street. The rain had stopped briefly. "It looks like this was a profitable endeavor."

"Yes, I'd say so," Lee agreed, turning away from the building.

Penelope slipped a little notebook into her hand and read off of a checklist. "Find location - disguise location - broadcast safely - dispel all enchantments - leave location in the exact same shape as we found it. Yep, we hit everything on the list." Lee chuckled and shook his head.

"What about next time?" Audrey asked. "I can start scouting out more locations. I'm sure London's full of them. Or if there's something else you need, you can tell me now and I can get a head start -"

"Audrey," Lee looked first at the pavement, then at her, "there isn't going to be a next time."

Audrey stared. After a minute, Penelope coughed. "Breaking the girl's heart wasn't on the to-do list, Lee."

"Look, my mum always said you should deliver bad news like ripping off a Band-Aid. One go is easier than -"

"What do you mean, this is the last time?" Audrey asked. "Who decided this? Did you? Was it Angelina?" she glanced at Lee, then Penelope. Lee shook his head.

"We _all _did, Audrey. Fred put it forward, It's getting too dangerous for you. We couldn't forgive ourselves if something happened."

"But I've barely DONE anything!"

"Ssshhh! Sssshhh!"

Audrey shrank back. "Sorry for yelling," she muttered. She wasn't sorry at all. "You told me I'm not the only Muggle in the connection, am I wrong?"

"There's no one like you, Audrey. Everyone's got some kind of expertise and you're, well, you're just kind of _here_. You're not really in the group or out of it. And you're in London, which is one of the most dangerous places to be. And the Muggles - and the wizards - they're dropping like flies. You've been lucky. You haven't really been hurt yet, you've flown under the radar. And we're keeping it that way."

In all of Lee's words, one absurdity stuck out to Audrey. "Wait, how do you know the phrase 'fly under the radar'?"

"My Mum's a Muggle. Didn't you know? And I'm a radio fiend - of _course _I know about radar." He smiled, but there was no mirth in it. He looked resigned. "Audrey, there's no arguing about this. Your work with us ends tonight. You've done real well, you've helped us tangibly. We won't forget you. But after tonight, none of us will contact you."

"Ever?" Audrey asked. "Or -"

"Until the war's over," she and Lee said in unison.

Audrey realized she had got a hold of her overcoat's lapel in a death grip. She forced her hand to relax. That familiar weight settled in on her. It was like being submerged in treacle. The feeling of helplessness.

"Audrey, listen to me. I'm treating you the same way I treat my Mum and my grandma. They refused to leave, and Dad's at home to protect them, and I can't see them hardly ever." He put his hands on her shoulders. "You have to believe me. This is because we love you. We're protecting you."

Audrey wanted to just shrink away and go home, end this scene already, but a sentence pulled its way out of her. "You don't show that you love someone by leaving them."

Penelope gave a little gasp, as if she was going to say something, but when Lee and Audrey glanced over at her, she had thought better of it.

"So this is how it ends?" Audrey asked. "You're just going to leave me here and then I won't see you again?" She drew her breath in, sharply. "Give me something, Lee. _Something_."

"I'm afraid I don't have anything to spare," Lee said, looking at Penelope. A streetlight caught his face, and he looked hollowed out, starved and tired. Audrey was sorry for being so harsh, but god _dammit_, she deserved better. She'd brought them here, right? She'd found the right place for their broadcast. She had actually _done _something this time.

Lee seemed to see past her, beyond her. "I do have something I can give you," he said. He focused on her again. "Magic."

"What kind of magic?" Audrey asked, as Lee took his wand out and asked Penelope to keep a lookout. "Black magic?"

Lee snorted. "I don't do any other kind, Audrey. No. I mean I'm going to cast some charms on you. Protective spells. Just to keep you safe."

"How long?"

"A few weeks. Assuming I don't…" he coughed.

"Shuffle off this mortal coil," Penelope finished.

"Right. Thank you, Miss Clearwater. If there's one thing I love when talking about death, it's euphemisms."

"Shakespearean euphemisms," Audrey added. She was rewarded by a tired grin from Penelope. '_You see, Lee Jordan_?' she thought. '_I fit in_.'

Lee stepped back. "Alright. I've done what I can."

"I don't feel any different," Audrey looked down at herself.

"You wouldn't. But the charms are in place - as taught to me by Kingsley himself."

"I wish I felt different." Audrey rubbed her hands together. "I wish I could just go with you."

Neither of them said anything. She looked up. This was it.

"Well, then. Goodbye. Stay safe."

Lee nodded. "Thank you, Audrey. Goodbye - and don't lose hope."

She couldn't say anything. She nodded, her throat full, and turned away. Audrey ran down the street, towards the Underground station. She was wrapped in magic. She was going home.

There was nothing left for Lee and Penelope there, so they turned towards their hiding spot. The places they stayed were carved out of the city, and abandoned just as quickly as they found them, waiting for the city to grow back over them, like moss. Tonight's spot to crash was in the back rooms of Harrod's, of all places - let Muggle security and luxury watch over them. Lee planned to take a picture that he could share with his Mum and Dad later.

"It's funny, you know," Penelope said as they strode along.

"What is?"

"When Audrey said that you don't show that you love someone by leaving them. I could think of a half-dozen ways in which that isn't strictly true."

"Well, so could I," Lee said. "What have I done to my Muggle family? I've left them."

"Yes… but my example was of a different sort. I just thought…"

"Yeah?"

"Well. My ex-boyfriend. I left him because it was the best way I could think of to tell him he was full of shit."

"Ah."

"It was - I wanted to tell him that he could be so much _better_. He could be better than a shill for the Ministry. But I couldn't think of a way how. I just decided I'd rather remember the boy I fell in love with than the man he became. It's terrible, isn't it?"

"That's love," Lee said, shrugging. "It sounds like you made a good call."

"And leaving was the only way I could show how I loved him."

Lee couldn't think of anything to say, so they walked on in silence. Something nagged at his memory, like a hangnail or an aching tooth. It wasn't until they reached Harrod's, to steal a few hours of sleep, that Lee remembered what was so important that had been bugging him. Penelope's ex-boyfriend - her only ex that Lee knew of - was Percy Weasley.

* * *

><p>AN: I meant to post this chapter a while back, but it insisted on coming out in a different shape and ending in a different way. And Penelope Clearwater was a surprise. But at least it's good and long.

BTW, when it comes to the native language of Ireland, I visited Dublin a couple of years ago and made the acquaintance of a charming young lady who studied at Trinity College, majoring in ancient Irish literature and language. (So cool!) And according to her and her friends (with whom I had a cup of coffee, so we shared one of the deepest bonds known to man), the native language of Ireland is "Irish," not "Gaelic." Sort of the same reason we don't refer to this language I'm using right now as "Germanic," or how we don't call the language used in Paris, "Francais." That's my take on it, and my story shall reflect it.

I am happily baffled and delighted by the love that this story receives. I try to keep it worthy of my readers, who stick around despite the spotty updates and interminable plotline! Thank you so much!


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